Everything’s always working out for me.

I am not an optimist. Sometimes my online "you can do anything" words of encouragement might hide that fact. Folks who know me might call me pessimistic. I prefer the term realist. But I've noticed if I look for stuff to go wrong I'm gonna find it, so I decided to start looking for things to go right.

Believe it or not, our thoughts are in our control. Paul tells us to take every thought captive ( 2 Corinthians 10:5) and I believe that we can change the way we think by focusing our thoughts on more positive things. I've been learning a lot about honing my thought life with Jon Acuff's new book, Soundtracks. Soundtracks, per Jon, are those consistent, repetitive thoughts that take up a lot of real estate in our minds. On this trip I decided to steal one of Jon's positive soundtracks; "everything is always working out for me."  And while things didn't go perfect (no trip ever does) things did seem to fall more my way. Now did more things go well because I manifested them into reality? Nope, I don't think so. But I was looking and focusing on things working out, and well, we all tend to find what we are looking for.

Here's an example. The last day of our trip we missed Rise boarding passes at the 7 am slot. For those of you not obsessed with all things Star Wars and Disney, to ride the Rise of the Resistance attraction at one of the Disney parks you have to get a boarding pass. Snagging a coveted spot in a boarding group requires fast fingers and a whole lot of luck. We tried again at noon and snagged a backup boarding group. With as slow as boarding had gone all morning we didn't really think we had a shot. But then, boarding groups began to get called faster and faster. As we watched our number approach we realized we would be at a dinner reservation when our group was up. The very helpful staff at the restaurant got us in early. We raced to the attraction and we got to ride, all together, ending our vacation with this signature attraction. God is good and He is working everything out for me. No I won't always get my way and no God doesn't promise me prosperity and fast passes in His gospel but when I focus on the good things in my life I see them and Him at work.

I'm really excited to continue to work on being more intentional about my thoughts and even more stoked that the lessons of Soundtracks will be an upcoming series that I am planning for the youth group of our church! I can't wait to see young people live out their purpose more fully by retiring broken soundtracks and replacing them with positive life-affirming ones!