Choices.  We all get to make choices.  What will you eat today?  Wear?  Where will you go?  What kind of a life will you have?  Who will you date?  Will you hold to your values?  Our lives are filled to the brim with choices and some days it’s all you can do to try and keep your head about you as you go about this choosing thing.

We recently had the privilege and blessing to go to Orlando with our son, his wife, and three grandchildren.  We were able to go to the Atlantic coast at Titusville, Florida to watch the last launch of the the Space Shuttle Discovery.  We left early, knowing there would be others who had the same thought.  Uh-oh, we’re going to be in traffic all day.  What’s our choice?  Should we go with this or turn around and play in the pool today?  We chose to go for it and the normally one hour drive to the coast from Orlando took us three hours.  OK, we can deal with this.  We watched the Shuttle launch, a pretty awesome sight for us west-coasters.  As soon as it was over, we headed for the van to try and beat the traffic out of there.  Well, we just hadn’t thought this out very well; we didn’t know ahead of time that there are only three roads out of town.  All roads out turned into parking lots!!

Here we are, four adults and three children in a van, trying to get out of town with the other trillion people with the same idea.  As you can well imagine, this could have turned into a disaster…three young children strapped in the backseat together can be a formidable thing!  Instead, my daughter-in-law, Autumn, and I kind of took it upon ourselves to entertain the troops as we waited.  Somehow, God allowed us to transform into Abbott & Costello for the afternoon and evening.  We laughed until our sides and cheeks hurt.  The children howled at our jokes and antics.  My husband and son never complained (we wondered what they were thinking as we spewed out one liners one after another).  We had a delightful day in the car…for the twelve hours it took us from start to finish even though we were only one hour away from our condo!

We get to choose so many things in our lives.  This was a day that we chose not to allow the circumstances get us down.  We made the most of it…and we had a most delightful day.

What are you up against today?  Is there a way you can turn this day/issue/trauma into something delightful?  Maybe that’s stretching things just a bit too far.  Maybe there’s no way that your circumstance can be turned into “delightful”.  OK, then, if not delightful, how about different?  God hasn’t left you alone in this , there’s always a choice in the matter.

We might as well get used to this choice thing.  It’s going to be with us as long as we’re on this earth.  I think God sits in heaven, looking down on us, and loves it when we choose to go beyond or above or around our circumstances.  I don’t know what you’re facing today, but if you can just get in the habit of looking for the way through in the opposite way of how you normally look at things, you’ll do just fine.  If nothing else, ask Him to help you choose and then go for it with gusto.  Who knows, maybe God will help you find the Abbott & Costello hiding in you too!