Quit looking through the damned straw

Happy those concerned for the lowly and poor; when misfortune strikes, the Lord delivers them. - Ps 41, 2

How long have I been indulging this habit of focusing on my frustrations and struggles to the exclusion of both my blessings and my calling?  I know so many people who are dealing with so many (far) greater challenges than my own. And I am among the richest people in the world, both materially and otherwise. Yet I'm back into the habit that my therapist described as looking at the spot through a straw. On the beautiful, vast mural of my life there is a black spot, and I point the straw of my attention there and refuse to take it away and look at the bigger picture: how much we have grown together, the abuses that are no longer a part of my life, the joy of being in God's presence. At least I have continued to try to help others along the way, and perhaps that is how this one verse has now lifted my own spirits.  In wallowing in my frustration over situations that I cannot change instead of allowing my focus to be broader - in making my chief concern for myself instead of for others - I have lost sight of all that God has done for me already, and thereby forgotten that the Lord will never fail to provide for my true needs.  How often he has done so in unlooked-for ways, including how he delivered me from my own past in a far different way than I thought best. Rather, I have grown demanding and petulant, and my impatience has made me so short-sighted and judgmental.

I should know better by now.