leap year.

Went snowboarding for the first time on Saturday the 25th. I don't know why I haven't written about it sooner. Maybe because I didn't fall in love with it like I wanted to. It was humbling, painful, scary, and simultaneously freeing and restrictive. And man, was it a workout. I wanted to be enthusiastic, but it didn't feel like I fit into snowboarding. Even though I knew it would be hard, I guess a part of me deep down wanted to be a natural. Unrealistic, I know...Haha. I think I'd be willing to go again someday though.

Anyways...

Sometimes I'm amazed at how I turn the littlest things into much bigger than they need to be. How I can take the smallest action or occurrence in my day and use it to define my life.

For example. On Monday, I was having an awful day. I was nauseous, still sore from snowboarding, hyper-emotional, and felt on the edge of a breakdown. I was at the register at work later that day, and a customer came up. Now, to give you some background, we have this coupon program that we have to up-sell...and we have to make a certain percentage every day. A "yes" counts for us and a "no" counts against us. We have to get one in every three people to sign up to make our minimum, and a lot of pressure was put on us about this at our most recent meeting. So this guy walks up and when I ask him to sign up he said "sure!" and then when I proceeded to get the rest of his info he rudely said "no" and brushed the inquiry away like it was the most disgusting insect. For some reason that interaction embodied this complete inadequacy that I had been feeling...this coupon program suddenly represented my inability to meet standards in life...and after he left I lost it. Thankfully I regained composure a short time later, but yeah. Ridiculous trigger, right? It was a strange day.

Sometimes I have a hard time dealing with where I'm at right now. Dealing with my purpose, or seemingly lack thereof. When I am reducing my life to the petty moments of my day where things don't work out, I need to check my perspective. I'm thankful for so many people, and so many things. It's a day-by-day, moment-by-moment choice to recognize the good and use it to fuel happiness. And it's not always easy.

I was reading Jon Acuff's blog "Stuff Christians Like" tonight and really liked the post. Part of it was:

"But we’re not promised our purpose. We’re promised God’s purpose. We’re not promised our definition of good. We’re promised God’s definition of good. And in the moment when life crashes down, and our own expectations of what “good” should look like fall apart to ashes, we tend to think God has failed us. Or does not love us. Or that “all things” don’t work for the good, just some things.

The truth, though, is that all things do. How? Because his purpose is exponentially bigger and more beautiful than mine could ever be. He is painting pictures with the universe as his backdrop. He is unraveling stories with generations as his paper. His vision and his ability to define good is so much grander than mine. So when I get his purpose, when whatever situation I’m in works toward his purpose, I don’t get my small definition of good. I get his massive definition of great."

I love that. And it speaks the truth.



Night all :)



P.S. Isn't it weird to think that today only exists every four years? Crazy.