Joseph's Baggage

The only other person who could beat my pessimism in our family would probably be Joseph. Although he is only 4 years old, he has a truck load of child-like skeptism. A typical evening would be for him to whine about not being allowed to watch TV (despite having spent over one hour in front of Disney channel) before bedtime. Each time I would agree to allow him an extra 10 minutes of TV, but he would still think that I wouldn’t stick to my side of the agreement. Hence, he would upset himself (including those around him) by crying for half an hour about this myth that he has created! (which by the way, has already exceeded the extra 10 minutes that I gave him)

As much as I have tried to assure and even remind him that I have always stuck to my promise, Joseph insists on being upset. Somehow, in his brain, there is a short circuit which is beyond my reach and comprehension. His mindset is fixed in that whatever mummy said, the response is no although the answer is yes!

Through his character, Joseph humbles me and helps me to learn about my relationship with God. I could see myself in his shoes, complaining about the situation around me; Compared to many, I have much to thank God for but I was blinded as I chose to focus on the not so perfect situation in my life. Once I was so determined to prove God wrong that I wrote down a list of unanswered prayer against those He had answered. To my greatest amazement, He had proved me wrong instead.

At a recent talk by Beth Moore, she shared that a lot of us have our mountains to face. Some of us have the faith to pray for the mountains to move aside and the mountains (or problems) did move!; for some, there is a need to climb the mountain; for others, God may cut a path through their mountains (ha, a shortcut to solving our problems) and finally, there were some pessimists, like Joseph and me, prefer to cling onto our mountains! Our focus should always be on Jesus, and not on our problems, our unanswered prayers or our emotions, else we may miss out on experiencing the joy that comes forth from answered prayer! Its time to stop clinging onto our mountains and start allowing God to work!