Your Glasses are on Backwards

I love this phrase. It comes out of the Big Book of AA. It tells of a story of someone who started to not like the meetings. They told of how they hated the stories that were told, the coffee that was made, the speakers that spoke, and the double lives of the people that were there. They write about how their recovery began to suffer until they were told something that impacted them beyond measure. "You have your glasses on backwards." They were told to turn their view of life and the meetings around. They told of how they were confronted about how easily they had gone from a focus on the positive to a focus on the negative. This change their recovery and they started moving forward again.
I know I just went through a time like this in my life. My glasses were on backwards. I was focusing on the negative, what I did not like, what was frustrating me. I needed to remember what is going beautifully, right, and wonderful. I forgot this:

So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can't see what's right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
So, friends, confirm God's invitation to you, his choice of you. Don't put it off; do it now. Do this, and you'll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:5-11

This is having my/our glasses on the "right" way. We need to remember that we need to live our lives with all the qualities that are listed in this passage. When we do not we miss out on so much of the rewards of living. Just like the person in the Big Book story, we miss out on all of the rewards that are being offered everytime we wake up and live our life because we are focused on what we think should be different. We forget that God has an open, standing invitation to us - all the time - we are never seperated from God. We only are seperated in our mind and in what we focus and place our attention on. I know that when I focus on how I treat others, being kind, being passionately patient, living in wonder and awe, and loving all people and situations I come into contact with - my life is so full of God's goodness I do not remember anything about that "sinful" life.

Today remember that you have an open invitation to be with God in every moment. Remember that the more your focus on love, kindness, and patience in your interactions with others the more you reap the rewards that God and this life offers you right now. Your glasses are on backwards - turn them around!

Namaste'