I recently went on a vacation. It was hot, it was sunny, it was fun, it was.....perfect. We had never been to this particular resort before and only having been one other time on a winter getaway, we really didn't know what to expect. We had taken along three teenage girls with us (call us crazy) who were experiencing this "hot holiday" thing for the first time. Their first meal at the resort felt more like a last supper. The food was different than what everyone was used to and the girls figured that they would probably never eat again. They even tossed around the word starvation (teenage girls after all, do have a flair for the dramatic). The fries didn't taste the same as ours, the steak wasn't the same as what Dad barbeques in the summer and there was definitely not a Tim Horton's drive thru. So panic set in, or hunger, not sure, probably a bit of both. People do strange things when they are hungry (ever see a two-year-old, waiting for their food in a restaurant?). Well now, imagine three teenage girls with low blood sugar. They headed back to the room and proceeded to eat the seven days worth of snacks they had packed in less than 24 hours. My daughter swears her friend had a tear in her eye when she ate the last olive in the jar she had brought along. Our teenagers were clearly not handling this well. This was going to be a long week.
So, I decided to give them an idea to chew on. We had two options. We could spend our time focusing on what wasn't right or we could spend our time focusing on what was. The choice was theirs and when they decided to take a second look at the situation, the experience was a completely different one.
Nothing in that buffet had changed from the day before but suddenly, all sorts of great food like grilled chicken, fish, and rice were on their plates. Not only had they found more than enough food that was tasty, but they found an appreciation for how lucky they were to have all of that food to choose from in the first place. The power of one choice. The choice to look at the positive rather than the negative.
It made me think. Life is a lot like that buffet. There is always plenty to choose from. A wide variety, ready for the taking. The choice is yours as to what you put on your plate. You can fill it with things you don't like the taste of and spend your time pushing it around with your fork, complaining about it, or you can go grab a new plate. Look for the things you do like, fill your plate, sit down and say Grace.
