It’s 6:30-7am. You open your eyes after getting a great night’s sleep and see the dawn light coming through the blinds. After stretching, you roll over and put your feet on the floor, and you go to make your coffee. As your coffee brews, you look around your home and it’s peaceful. The kids are still sleeping, it’s clean and tidy which invites you to enjoy it. You pour your cup of coffee and step on the porch. None of the neighbor’s dogs are barking, the rooster across the street isn’t going crazy, and your outdoor cat hasn’t met you as soon as you open the door yowling for food yet. Standing there, you smell the fresh air in the light breeze and instead of the usual 85 degrees, a glorious 66 degrees greets you this morning. After you finish your coffee, you head in, get showered and changed and wake up your kids (who happen to wake up by hugging your neck, by the way). They get ready for the day with no fuss and before you know it, you and the kids are loaded up and headed to your destination on time. So far, it’s perfect.

Unfortunately, this is where the perfection seems to end. After dropping the kids off, someone in front of you is driving slowly and makes you late to work. When you finally get to work, nothing seems to be going your way and you hear a rumor about yourself from a co-worker. By the time lunch comes around, you’re sure this is one of the worsts days you’ve had in a while, and your attitude is atrocious, forgetting the attitude of joy & peace you had just hours earlier.

This happens to everyone, and it happens very often. Every morning we wake up is a complete reset; another chance to have a great day, another chance to have peace. Yet, when things go against what we plan or want, we decide the day is bad and our attitude reflects that for the rest of the 8-12 hours of our day often affecting more than just us individually. When this happens to us, I encourage us to remember Proverbs 17:22, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Think on what Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.”

At some point in time, we all will have something that sours our attitude whether it be stubbing a toe or being late to work. Let’s not let the small things affect our overall attitude.

“Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God has done.”