Pudding Pool

“If the sun of God's countenance shine upon me, I may well be content to be wet with the rain of affliction.” --Joseph Hall

Imagine with me for a moment...if you had a swimming pool and filled it with chocolate pudding. Now when you jumped in what would you be swimming in? Not a trick question here, you would be swimming in chocolate pudding. If you jumped in expecting to be surrounded by crystal clear, refreshing and cool water you would be sorely disappointed. But what do you expect, if you filled it with chocolate pudding? You should notice before jumping in that you would be covered in gooey, brown slime.

This might seem like fun for about one day. Overnight raccoons, rodents and opossums would have drowned in it. It would have a haze of flies hovering over it, laying eggs that would soon be maggots. The milk products in it would have soured in the hot sun and you would have a stagnant, stinking mess.

Does it still sound like fun to jump in on day 2?

Life is like this pool. If you constantly fill your backyard bathtub with negative thoughts, mean observations of others, criticism of self and everyone else, gossip, whining, self-hatred, regret, unforgiveness, bitterness...etc, then what do you expect to be swimming in? What do think you will feel and see when you are wading around in this negative and nasty soup?

“Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.” --St. Augustine

What you fill your head with is what comes out of your mouth. It affects your actions, facial expressions, feelings, attitude every part of you is touched by what you are allowing to splash around in the tide pool in your temples. What you fill your head with is what radiates off of you. Others can see and smell the stink of the spoiled sludge miles away. Not to mention how bored they are of hearing it spill forth from your mouth.

A friend of mine whose husband is a psychiatrist had accompanied him to a conference on changing brain pathways. Basically your thought patterns are like creek beds and that when you have a stressful stimulus you typically react in the same way and your brain travels down the familiar pathway, like water taking the path of least resistance. She was telling me that with practice you can actually re-route and redirect where your brain typically goes. So if when you get upset about something you instantly go to a sing-song chant of negativity for instance saying to yourself, “your fat, lazy, old and worthless over and over again.” You could instead stop that and instead sing to yourself, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13

I speak from personal experience in that this can work and you can change where your thoughts habitually go. Take the high road not the low road. If you are always looking for the ugliness in others it won't be hard to see. If instead you try to think, feel and see the best in yourself and others you might be surprised at what you find.

If when you walk into your friend's newly decorated room and the first thing you see is what you don't like, take a breath, and find what you do like and then speak. If it's your own house stop staring at the stain on the carpet and instead focus on the pretty picture on the wall.

It's not too late to clean out your pool and start with fresh water. Start putting on a water filter to first catch and stop pollutants from entering. Pray and ask the Lord to help you to redirect the pathways in your brain to go to positive and encouraging messages instead of negative. Constantly get out the little net and clear out the debris that has wafted into your water. Just because it's in there doesn't mean it has to stay. Toss out the recurring record of hopelessness and instead put on a positive track of praise and worship. Remind yourself that, “You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!”

“When you have no helpers, see all your helpers in God. When you have many helpers, see God in all your helpers. When you have nothing but God, see all in God; when you have everything, see God in everything. Under all conditions, stay thy heart only on the Lord.” --Charles H. Spurgeon

Please dear Lord, open our eyes, hearts, minds and very souls to see ourselves and others with the love You have for us. Help us to change our minds and change our thoughts to focus on the positive, banish the negative and work towards seeing You in everyone.

“Finally, brothers whatever is true,whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praise worthy, think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

Heaven helped me 12/4/08
Love Always,
A*