Matter Of Perspective Part Two: Flooded Vacation

Every year for our big summer vacation, the Hibbard family tries to go somewhere we have never been. If you have been around CSF for a while, you know that we have a goal that each of our kids will have visited and spent time in all 50 states before they graduate from High School. It is a fun thing for us to plan new adventures each summer and go to different parts of our great nation and experience new things with our kids while they are growing up. Vacations are a year round planning process that builds excitement all year.

This summer we are going to Wisconsin. More specifically the Wisconsin Dells area. It is a great place full of lakes, rivers and water parks. They have the largest assortment of indoor water parks in the country. Great news when you have active boys and recent skin cancer episode to deal with......

Unfortunately, you probably recognize the name Wisconsin Dells even if you have never been there. It is one of the hard hit places with the horrible floods and tornadoes. As a matter of fact, the place we are scheduled to stay use to be on a beautiful lake that is no longer there.....because the levy broke and the lake drained. Other areas around where we are going have been flooded and the water is just now starting to recede. A tornado also ripped through the area and leveled a few towns.

I have to be honest when I first saw the floods and devastation I thought.."Perfect, the place we are going on vacation is flooded and the lake is gone! "I can't believe our bad luck"...blah blah blah...Then over the next few days I saw people's homes flowing down the river. You see entire cities under water and the water is not moving. I saw families interviewed who have lost everything and did not have flood insurance. Immediately I felt ungrateful and very much like the whining, self-centered and personal entitlement driven people that drive me crazy! I had to whisper a prayer of forgiveness for my attitude and then whispered a prayer for people who are suffering with this flood and the recent tornadoes.

As I then could tell Peyton....our vacation may a be a little different, but we are still going. We may not have a pretty lake to look at and play in.....but we have not lost our home. Their is no need to complain...at least we have the privilege to go on vacation. As a matter of fact, I told him that we were going to specifically drive to some of these town that have been under water and people's lives turned upside down...so that we could see what it looks like and that this would be a good reminder of what is most important in life.

We always want our vacations to be memory makers and adventurous. I have a sense that our stop in the fine state of Wisconsin will be a memory we will never forget! My prayer for all of us is that we will be careful about the whining we do this summer of gas prices and the heat. Our homes, for now, are not heading down the Mississippi, our neighborhoods have not been flattened by tornadoes and down town Charlotte is not under water!

Attitude and perspective........it is one of the few things we can control in life! How are you doing today with yours?

Today's Bible Reading Colossians Chapter 5

This book ends like so many of Paul's letter's to the different churches. He ends it with his heart felt passion and compassion for them. He ends it with listing those in the local church that have helped build the church into a life changing agent of Grace. It also ends with Paul giving them and us a Matter of perspective. The last verse implores them to remember his chains! He is writing this letter to them from Prison! He is in jail because of his Faith in Jesus. Whatever they were going through in the church was not as bad as being in JAIL! Same holds true for us today!