Optimism - anticipation, cheerfulness, confidence, easiness, elation, encouragement, hopefulness, idealism, looking on bright side, positivism, sanguineness, and sureness.
These are just a few words that describe my new outlook on life. All my life I have thought of myself as less of an optimist and more of a realist. I tend toward the negative in an awful situation and expect the worst in a bad situation. I have always overlooked the beauty in struggle and I have continually understated the magnificence of the world we live in. Silver linings only exist for me when they are clear cut and well drawn.
From the time I can remember I have always had a heart for service. I have always wanted to do for those less fortunate than me, though I believe there is no such thing as true altruism, I do believe that everyone is capable of sacrificing for another without expecting anything in return.
The problem I now face is that there is so much destruction in the world, so many people that need to be help, so little people that are willing to help, and seemingly nowhere (No God) to turn to. More often than not I find myself reading of God's grace and mercy in the pages of my NIV Bible only to later turn to CNN or BBC and see the destruction of man taking it's course. I turn on the TV only to find children that are impoverished, homeless, disease ridden, and helpless; whole villages are decimated and ruined by big business buffs who live in million dollar homes and contribute the bare minimum to avoid taxes; and nations where the poverty rate exceeds 75% of the population.
And I ask myself, where is God in this?
It was not until I was in convocation while studying abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland that a man from a missionary project called Mercy Ships came in and talked about the work Mercy Ships had been doing. He showed us a video that consisted of before and after photos of people in Africa, actual people, with tumors the size of watermelons growing out of their mouths or horrendous deformities that only required a simple cosmetic procedure that these people could neither perform nor afford. As the video went on it began to tell the story a young man who had one of these aforementioned tumors and I began to feed into his story. He could not have been much older than me.
The video explained that people with these deformities were cast out from their villages and made to live alone. The doctors performed the surgery on the young man and then the video took a turn... for the better. The young man, bandaged and wounded post-surgery, put his hand to his new face completely silent, completely frozen, and I knew, I knew exactly what he was feeling. It was as if my own heart and his heart were in sync. This young man who had never seen his own face before, who had never felt his own face before, put his own hand to his own face for the first time and this, this action that we so often take for granted, was the most beautiful moment of his life...
I sat there with tears running down my face, in a room full of my peers, silently reflecting on the beauty of life and the grace we are doused in everyday.
This scene is the scene that will forever be etched in my heart and in my soul. I will always be grateful to the young man who unknowingly taught me so much about myself and about life.
I now actively seek the beauty in everyday life. This blog was created for the purpose of always being able to find the good in the bad, for the trivialities of life that we constantly take for granted, and the people who give of themselves and never, ever expect anything back. Happiness can be found in simply waking up to a new day and admiring what the world has to offer.
A new leaf has been turned and it will, from here on out, always be green with a silver lining...
