Blessings

TGIF!!! There's blessing #1. I have survived another week and actually this week has gone by pretty fast! I can't believe it's already Friday, but boy am I thankful. I've actually had a pretty good week. I feel like I'm tuning into my spiritual side more lately and focusing on God and what He's trying to tell/show me.

First of all, I noticed that I had started to become very down and depressing and focusing on all the negative that was going on around me. I didn't like what that was doing to me or the person I was becoming because of that. SO, I made the decision I was going to change. After all, it's up to us to control our emotions and how we view things, right? RIGHT! So in order to help myself I started 2 projects. The first one is I'm sending my husband an email each day telling him different reason why I love him or what made me fall in love with him. Sometimes I get to see him read these and the smile that comes across his face is priceless. Now let me tell you, I'm not doing this for any kind of personal gain at all. My husband has listened to my negativity and complaining for long enough (not about him, just life and work and things like that) and it's time I start telling him some positives!

Project # 2 is a gratitude journal. I have seen/heard about this from several resources and always that was a neat idea but I never participated myself. Well the idea struck me the other day when I made the decision to start focusing on the positives. Instead of getting upset and complaining when things don't go the way I want them or about things that I have no control over I need to focus on at least one positive thing that happened to me that day. I'm trying not to repeat things and come up with a new one each day. You might think that this is hard, but so far I have not had any trouble. In fact, once I start focusing on the positives it's hard to stop at just one. This has definitely changed my mood and my outlook on situations. I used to join in on conversations when people would be complaining about something, but now I avoid them. I don't need that stress and negativity in my life! Now I need to find me an actual journal this weekend to log my gratitudes into instead of jotting them down on the notepad I have.

God has also pointed out some other blessings in my life this week. I'm not talking about my husband, our jobs,  transportation to get us to those jobs, a roof over our heads, a loving family, friends, being a Christian, living in a free country; I could go on and on. Let me begin by telling you that I have wondered about my job lately. I work as a Claims Assistant for an auto insurance company and I enjoy it. However, I have a degree in Elementary Education. Now I know there are lots of people out there who have a degree in a certain field and have a job in a totally different field. That's perfectly fine, nothing wrong with that at all. Personally I have been questioning if I am in the right job for me. Is this what God wants me to doing with my life, time and talents. I don't know that I necessarily should go into teaching, but don't know that I'm to be a Claims Assistant the rest of my life either. Now let me back up and tell you that from as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a teacher. When other kids struggled with what to study in college or what career path to take, I had it easy. Up until I completed college, had my degree and was ready to get a job. You always hear how they always need teachers. Well apparently I wasn't what they were looking for or they weren't what I was looking for and I never found a position. I ended up subbing for a while before realizing I needed to find something more permanent and entered into the world of Administrative Assistants. Don't get me wrong, I love computers and typing and all that as well. So yes, that seemed a good fit for me to. However, I as well as members of my family voiced concern about my profession. I didn't really give it much thought and did what I had to do to pay the bills and keep myself alive.

Fast forward to this week. Again, I have been questioning my purpose in life lately. As I was sitting here at my desk the other day working on a project I had been given God spoke to me. He is using me here, right now in the job I am in even though it's not related to my degree at all. I have a love for reading and writing and ultimately think my dream job would be a children's librarian. Well God is using that love in my and my talent for writing (remember my first post and how I had several professors tell me I'd make a good writer). The project I was given is to write procedure manuals for the tasks that we do because we don't have any and there is nothing for new hires to refer to other than to ask fellow employees. At first I complained about having to do it because I was not given any extra time - I had to squeeze this into my already busy days amongst my many other responsibilities. BUT, God showed me that through this project He is still using me. Those skills and talents He gave me are being put to use and not being wasted. Even though this is probably not where I'll be the rest of my career, I'm being used while I'm here. My supervisor could have picked anyone to do this project, but she chose me. And I thank her for recognizing those talents and allowing me to use them. If she had picked anyone else they may not have put the time and attention and professionalism into it that is needed. So yeah, this makes me feel a lot better.

And ultimately, isn't our job to do what GOD wants us to do and use the talents and skills he has blessed us with no matter where we work or what kind of degree we have?

If you're still reading thanks for sticking with me. I promise my future posts will be shorter! Maybe I should consider writing a novel! ;-)