Over the last week, I have had two cars break, my A/C unit
in my home broke and I came home from a weekend away to find ants. But you know
what? I am blessed!
A friend of mine posted this last week and I decided to
really try it. I do not consider myself
a huge complainer, well unless you include nagging my husband, oops! I do, however, like to be in control (people
may have thrown around the word control-freak). This need to be in control can
stress me out when things go wrong so I find myself complaining. I have been trying to work on it which made
this a great challenge. I decided that I
thought it meant finding the good in things as to not complain about them. Wow!
What a difference it has made. I was certainly challenged with some frustrations
this last week, but I truly believe that trying to look at things in a good way
made me so much less stressed.
Let me explain the blessing in each of my frustrations so
you can see what I am talking about.
After dropping Ella
off at my parent’s house last week, I went to brake and my car kept going. The
brakes were working, but I my wheels kept going. This sounds awful, but here is
the blessing… I was going slowly and was able to stop the car by putting it in
park and turning off the engine rather quickly and there were not any cars in
front of me. As if that was not enough of a blessing, I was able to start the car
and get it back to my parent’s neighbor who is a mechanic that is very giving
and generous with his time. He said he was willing to look at the car so I
would not have to drive it anywhere else. Turns out it was not anything major wrong with
it!
The second challenge/blessing is that my parents are not
using their second vehicle as they are out of town so I was able to it. As I got in the car, it would not start. The
blessing was that John, the amazing mechanic-neighbor was outside and looked at
it. He said that it needs a new battery and helped me jump it. I was able to take it to auto zone where they
replaced the battery for me. As an extra bonus, the lady at the store gave me a
coupon for 15%! (Oh, side note, my niece was at my parent’s and was watching
Ella. I did not drop my infant off to a vacant home! J)
The third challenge/blessing was that after coming home from
a weekend away, I noticed ants in my house. I know they are not damaging, but
they gross me out. If you have ever had an infestation, you may be able to
understand this. Well, it turns out that
that we got home in time to catch them before a full infestation happened. After
killing what I could find inside and spraying outside the window sill where
they were coming in, I was able to minimize the problem without calling pest
control.
My last challenge/blessing happened when I noticed a wet
spot on my ceiling. After a little
exploration, I realized it was coming from the A/C unit. Yet, again, I tried not to worry and just had
faith without complaining. My blessing
was that my sister’s neighbor who does HVAC work happened to be off from work
and was able to come over quickly. Bonus was that the repair was minor and
fairly inexpensive! Woohoo!
Through all of these inconveniences, no one was hurt, nothing
killed my bank account and I was blessed with people in my life who helped me
out quite expeditiously.
I am so glad that this “not complaining” test helped me gain
such great perspective. I now challenge you to try it. You may be surprised.
*I feel like I should add the caveat that I did mention my mishaps to people such as to explain to my coworkers why I was late to work or to ask advice. I do not, personally, think that mentioning a challenge counts as a complaint unless you actually complain about it or wallow in it. In my case, my series of unfortunate events became laughable at work, almost like a sit-com.
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