Me no likey my negativity

I took some time to read a bunch of my "recent" (as in, the last few posts, although they stretch back a few months) and noticed a disturbing trend: my negativity. I realize it is good to be honest with my emotions, but "negative" is not one that usually is mentioned about my general attitude. If folks are asked, "What is Ben like?", usually words like fun, joyful, goofy, unique, etc. are brought up. Lately I have felt less and less "those words", and it bothers me. I have let the troubles of life (and if I really look honestly at them, they are NOTHING compared to what most folks deal with) get to me, worry me, frustrate me...and I feel like I have allowed all that to creep in.

So right now, 8:24 am (CST) on Aug. 7, 2007, sitting on our living room couch with Jax in the "thinking chair" next to me about to watch "Go Diego Go!", I am pledging (and making this my prayer) to get back to being "me". God created me with a certain "life attitude" that I hope to get back to, and soon. I have always had a natural "bent" toward positivity, faith that God will provide, and a general joie de vive-attitude. And it has always been easy (aka natural, not "forced" or fake) for me to be that way; God created me that way, and my upbringing helped encourage that as well. I have been blessed with a family that is positive, fun-loving, upbeat, and "young at heart"; as a result, I have found myself to be the same way.

Therefore, I need to get back to that. Maybe I've forgotten to see all the good God Stuff around me everywhere. My wife, my son, food on the table, a roof over my head, clothes, and people who care about me. I need to really start living Matthew 6:25-34: 25: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[a]?
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:25-34;&version=31;)

So, there it is. It is a passage I have held onto in the past, and I will hold to it now.