Notice the good

I had this post written as I lounged in bed this morning, listening to someone laugh outside my window and the crunch and swish of the leaves as someone else walked by, but now I am sitting here drinking my coffee and wanting to turn on the TV...The Amazing Race is waiting.  The movie I saw Saturday, and the radio show I listened to yesterday and the devotional I read a few days ago are swirling around my head and I am not sure if I can pull it together. So...just start.
You know this picture?

Well, the little Vietnamese girl whose clothes were burned off of her by a napalm bomb spent many years being bitter and angry.  She is now in her 50's and lives in Canada and finally realized that she was wasting her life and now looks for the joy in the present instead of living in the despair of the past.  I am definitely paraphrasing what I heard on the radio show (which was about the ethics of spending scientific resources on instruments of war and destruction, nothing about my topic) She has changed her focus...negative to positive.

If you could live every day of your adult life twice, what would you do differently the second time around?  How would you use that "do-over" to live better?  

THAT

is how we should be living the days that we are given.

Not "That inconsiderate person just woke me up early on a holiday morning..." But, "Someone is laughing! Early on a holiday, how wonderful to be awoken by laughter!"

The sunshine on the leaves

not

the shadows under the roots

smiles

not

frowns

 love

not

criticism

As for me, I choose joy.  I choose belief. I choose hope. I choose life.