Attitude...

I'm not sure who said "Attitude is everything." but they were so right.  Yesterday I was having one of those days where it was just so hard to have a good attitude about anything.  The harder I tried the more I got sucked in my own negativity.  I was tired and tired of feeling tired. The kids were cranky. It was snowing...a lot.  Then I finally had to say enough is enough.  I put Mia down for a nap and then put in a good workout of putting Lorelei in her snow gear.  We went outside to play and wait for Eva to get home from school and I could feel my bad attitude blow away with the swirling snowflakes.

I know it's not always that easy.  I spent many months trapped in my negativity.  It was last winter in fact.  To protect our baby who was born premature we decided to spend the winter "hibernating".  What that boiled down to was I left the house twice a week.  Once to grocery shop and once to go to bible study.  The walls of my already small house quickly closed in on me.

When Mia was about 8 months (and 4 months into hibernation) she started to regress if you will.  She simply stopped sitting and refused to be put in a sitting position.  She wasn't doing well with eating baby food and then she started to struggle with bottles too.  Now for a mama who has been hibernating for 4 months with a baby and a danger-seeking curious one year old it was almost more than I could take.

There was particular day that was going very badly.  It must have been the weekend because my husband and Eva were home to witness my frustration.  I was trying to feed Mia and she was struggling and refusing.  I threw the bottle across the room. It broke open leaving a sticky trail of formula down the wall and puddled on the floor.  I set Mia down on the floor and simply walked out of the house, slamming the door.  I got in the car and started driving, nowhere.  I was crying so hard I probably shouldn't have been driving but I felt like if I didn't escape my bad attitude it was going to make me explode.

It's funny what we do when our attitudes go south.  Kids throw tantrums.  I myself tend to cry, yell, slam doors...similar to a tantrum I suppose.  I wish I had the restraint of my husband.  When he's having a bad day he disappears to the basement and tackles the laundry with increased fervor. Somedays I think he's superhuman but I'm pretty sure God put us together so that he would balance my erratic ups and downs.

It was shortly after that episode when I witnessed one of Eva's tantrums.  I could so clearly see myself in her that it quite frankly scared me.  I didn't want to be this way and I didn't want her to think it was okay.  So began mission good attitude.

It involved a lot of prayer, continuous prayer to see things the way God sees them.  I had been participating in an online photo a day challenge for some time by then but it was amazing the way I started seeing differently.  Seeing beauty and being awestruck.

I kept a journal handy, on the top of the page I wrote "Joy is..." and everyday I would challenge myself to see joy in things and write it down and then reread it a hundred times. In those really, really frustrating moments I would go in another room and take deep breathes or if Dana was home I'd head for a walk or a bath or my bedroom.  And ever so slowly my negativity stopped ruling my days.

One night Dana and I sat down and wrote out a list of "house rules" to serve as a reminder to us and as an example to our kids of who we are and strive to be.  It did get a bit lengthy but we did it with the understanding that none of us are perfect, but there is grace. We keep it displayed in our kitchen, the hub of our home, so we all can see it.  And when an issue arises we can gently point out "rule number 12...." or whichever applies.

I was watching Veggie Tales "Sweetpea Beauty" with my girls and there was a part that struck me and has stayed with me.  Prince Larry says "How is it that you find beauty in everything?" Sweetpea replies "I don't. It's God who see the beauty in everything. I just choose to agree with him."

And so I choose to agree with him too and things (and my attitude) are ever so much brighter.