Broken

This Lent I have been reading daily meditations, the theme this week is temptations. I'm realizing my biggest temptation is to keep my status quo. If I'm down stay down, I'll eventually get over it, if I'm happy,great go with it, but not put a lot of effort into adjusting or improving wherever I am.

While on vacation, enjoying the ocean I love to collect seashells. While doing that I have noticed how many broken shells there are. While the broken pieces are still beautiful I only pick up the whole to take home.
But that's what is so great about my God, I am one broken mess stuck in my mediocre, but He sees the beauty in me, and He whispers to me that in Him I am whole, I have a place. A place specifically that I am called to fill. He accepts my mediocre, but He wants me whole because then I am giving Him and all those around me my best. It is then I am truly showing others His love through me.
I found a really beautiful broken shell today, when I showed it to Anna she said that would look awesome as a sun in a piece of art. How much her words spoke to my heart, brokenness can be made whole by surrounding it with more beauty. To step out of my comfort zone (my house) to search out more beauty in my life and to become more beautiful myself. That is my challenge this Lent, that is what I seek, it's my journey.
"I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life,then that you and your descendants may live by loving your God, heeding His voice, and holding fast to Him."
-Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Choosing life, it's so easy on the beach as the kids laugh and play. It's harder in the day to day when their is schoolwork to be done, appointments to make and keep, exercise to do, and discipline always discipline, for the kids and for me. Choosing life = choosing joy. I have so much joy in my life, I just have to choose to see it and thank Him for all of it, the big moments and the fleeting ones.
Clinging to Him on my journey.