Is your glass half empty...or half full?

Life can be hard sometimes.

Today was just one of those days. I woke up exhausted because my little dog that sleeps in my room withe me got sick in the middle of the night and I was up cleaning up messes at the charming hour of 2 AM. 

Had a crazy morning trying to get chores done and get the girls out the door to piano lessons, and then held the fort down for a few hours with a very pregnant dog. While everybody else was gone, I sat on the couch next to Nina and worked on school - which right now consists of  studying the Westminster Confession of Faith and all the Scripture verses they use to back up their beliefs.

As soon as Mom and the girls got home, we had tons of groceries to unload, friends came over to borrow our truck and trailer, and we forgot to let Nina out...so she couldn't hold it any longer and let loose all over the kitchen floor. Nice.

Just as I settle back down on the couch to start school again, Mom gets an email from someone interested in our Papillon puppies, but they want new pictures. So, we pull out 5 squirming puppies and try to get them all to stay still and look at the camera at the same time while trying to convince the external flash on my camera to cooperate. We get the pictures done, take them back to Mom, and she looks at them. Rejected. Back out to the kitchen for "Take 2."

These pictures turn out pretty good, but when we go back to the computer, Mom has an email from a previous Papillon buyer who says that their dog twisted it's intestine a few months ago and died. 

By this time, it's pretty late in the afternoon and I head down to the barn to bring the horses in from the pasture and feed everybody, and one of the mares is sick. Really, really sick. She's laying down and has obviously been thrashing around for quite some time. Ever since we lost Steam Roller to colic, I just feel sick when I see a horse in the beginning stages. I run into her stall and kneel down next to her to see if she will get up. She doesn't, so I start praying desperately, bring the horses in double-quick and run up to the house to alert Mom and grab some Banamine (equine version of Aspirin). She looks hydrated, but when we try to walk her, she collapses and her legs start shaking. The Banamine finally kicked in. She started settling down and doing better, our friends bring the trailer back, we get the horses fed and settled in for the night, and turned the lights out in the barn.

 

As we started up to the house, Mom asked me if I'd heard about the little Papillon who died. I told her that Anna had told me, and then paused for a second. I looked at her and said, "Life is hard. Real hard. And pretty depressing at times." She nodded, smiled, looked around our beautiful property at our wonderful barn and awesome horses and said, "Yeah, but it can be really beautiful, too." She's right....so right.

 

It's pretty amazing how easy it is for us to get caught up in the little things that just annoy us. Sometimes it can be so hard to be content, and I know exactly what Paul meant when he said, " I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content..." It is a learning process...being content is not easy, nor does it come naturally, let me tell ya!

Yeah, it was a rough day. But I got quite a few hours to just pour over God's Word and read over and over the precious promises of salvation, justification, and redemption that it offers. It really depends on the perspective we are coming from. If we could only view our lives through God's eyes, how different we would think and act. How trivial these little things are. We are loved and cared for by the Creator of this universe, and He sends us exactly what we need at the time...sometimes He sends things to grow us, to assure us, to humble us, but whatever it is, He is working for our good.

So is life that bad? Not really!