So this week hasn’t been the best, to put it nicely. But I’m trying to stay positive. God never promised life would be easy, but he expects us to handle hardships with dignity, class, and love. Basically, I’ve tried to have a “What would Jesus do?” mentality by looking at the bright side of things, not dwelling on the negative and feeling sorry for myself, and being thankful for what I have and thankful it’s not worse.

So let’s take a look at this week, shall we?

Monday (the most mild day):

Problem 1: I went to 3 stores trying to shop End-Of-Summer sales and guess how many great deals I got… Zero. I bought nothing. 
How I handled it: Instead of grumbling about all the clothes I wanted to find and complaining about how I hate shopping etc, I decided to be thankful for that I have plenty of clothes already and I am not going to die or freeze because I didn’t find anything this weekend.

Problem 2: Also, Miami lost. Pretty bad. And the score was terrible even though they just made stupid mistakes and could have probably won. My husband was [very understandably] upset and hasn’t stopped talking about it.
How I handled it: Instead of telling Pearson it’s just a game, going to bed early that night, and resenting him, I decided to watch the entire game, support him, and give him someone to vent to. I am thankful to have such a passionate husband. I am thankful he watched the Georgia game on Saturday with me. I am thankful he wants me to watch football with him. I focused on (and helped him focus on) the fact that Miami is a very young team. I mean, they started a true freshman quarterback on the road on Monday night.

Tuesday:

Problem: Pearson’s car broke down on the way to school. He finally got it to start again and made it to the mechanic only breaking down one more time on the way. It turned out some hoses are loose and the car is overheating. It was $500+ to fix.
How I handled it: Instead of getting upset and worrying about where the money would come from, I know we will be OK. We just might need to cut back in other areas this month. Instead of complaining about only having one car between us for a couple days, I am thankful we have a car and that this happened after we got the new one. I am also thankful that we have a mechanic we trust and that Pearson was in a relatively safe place when he broke down. Both times.

Wednesday:

Problem: Pearson woke up before me and tried to get on the wifi with his tablet. We had no wifi. He woke me up and I tried to get on the internet via an ethernet cable with my work computer. That didn’t work either. Great. This is actually a bigger problem for us than it would be for some people because I work from home every day using that internet. I kinda have to work. Pearson called the internet company and they said there was an outage in our area and the techs had been working on it since 1:00 AM. So Pearson dropped me off at Starbucks on the way to school so I could use their internet for work. I was stuck there till all day until he got off. Remember, we only had one car at this point.
How I handled it: Instead of complaining about having to get work done in a loud coffee shop with the smell of coffee and yummy pastries, I am thankful for the lovely smell of coffee and ear phones. Instead of grumbling about not having my own car and literally being stuck at Starbucks for about 9 hours (actually I did start to complain about this, but stopped myself), I am thankful places like Starbucks exist with free wifi and they let me sit there all day and get my work done. I listened to a cappella worship music which always puts me in a good mood and I limited myself to only 2 Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

I don’t write this to brag on myself. I write this to share that I am working on having the right reaction when trials hit. I want this kind of thing to become second nature to me. I want to stop worrying and complaining so much. I want to trust that God is in control even when it seams the storm has hit. And I want to share my struggles as well as my successes. And besides, I share everything else with you wonderful readers, right? Why wouldn’t I share this?

Have you ever had one of these weeks from You-Know-Where? How did you handle it? Did you try to focus on the positives?
Thanks for reading!