Problem or Blessing

I've been learning a lot lately about how the way we choose to look at something affects how we see that issue, and the effect it has on our lives. Like most people, I've heard this millions of times, but lately I have realy come to understand it and see just how much our perception can change things.

We can choose to view anything that happens to us as a problem, or as a blessing. Even those things that seem like hardships teach us and help us become better people, sometimes the moments that seem the hardest in our lives are also the most defining. Likewise, even with the most wonderful things that can happen to us, if we search we will find problems in them. That wonderful new responsibility that we were so excited to get takes time away from something else we enjoy doing.

Today I was looking at some music on youtube and came across the song "Breath of Heaven", which is one of my all time favorite songs. It is basically sung from Mary's point of view when she is pregnant. Anyways, that got me thinking. Mary is generally viewed as one of the most blessed women of all time, I mean this is the woman who gave birth to and raised Christ, what an incredible priviledge. And what a nightmare! Think of all the things that poor woman went through in her life. She could easily have wondered why God did this to her. What did she do wrong that made God give her a son who she would have to watch struggle just because of who He is? What did she do wrong to have to watch her innocent son get tortured and hung on a cross by the very people he'd been trying to help? Imagine what she must have faced. Did she view it as an awesome priviledge? An awesome burden? A punishment? I really can't tell you, we don't know much about what life was like for her. It was her decision though, certainly she could very easily have justified any of these answers.

My point is that everything that happens in our life can either be a blessing or a burden, it is up to us to decide which it is. I am really going to try to work much harder to view life's situations as blessings rather than problems.