This post is from my archives written in 2003. It’s a great testimony to how having a good attitude will affect the way you think about things. Enjoy!

Take a seven-day trip to New York for a wedding (three days driving with 8 kids), a move into a new house and Christmas all within sixteen days and what do you get? You get a glimpse into the Vosler’s month of December 2003!

As I sit here on a rainy night in my new home office two days before Christmas, a lot is on my mind. I’m thinking about the cards we didn’t send, the gifts we didn’t buy, the decorations we didn’t hang and the season we were too busy to enjoy. I’m thinking about what would cause us to put ourselves through such stress. I’m thinking about unpacking, finishing up in the old house so we can put it on the market, and trying to squeeze out some last drops of excitement from the biggest holiday of the year.

I’m thinking back to Thanksgiving when we were in our old house eating dinner in the middle of a half packed house and I was frustrated. I was thinking, “Holidays aren’t supposed to be like this. We should be enjoying ourselves. We shouldn’t be fuming and fretting over a move, a trip and another holiday.”

When I took some time to think it through, it dawned on me that I had the power to decide how I was going to react to the situation. The next day, I had a new attitude. I realized that we had 20 days to get everything together and if we did a little bit every day we would get it done. Well, as you can imagine, 20 days went like a flash and we were just a tiny bit ahead of where we were originally.

As Joanne was confidently doing what needed to be done, I felt like I was going to fall apart. I told her, “I can’t do this anymore.” It was then I realized that I needed something else to help me through, something stronger and bigger than me.

I turned to a little book I have that lately I’ve been promoting to family and friends. It’s called “Thought Conditioners – forty powerful spiritual phrases than can change the quality of your life” by Norman Vincent Peale. The phrase that brought me the most peace was phrase 35: Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Psalm 55:22.

Here is the commentary he writes afterwards: A human mind can stand only so much weight. One mental burden piled upon another, unless relief is obtained, will in due course make you reach your breaking point and cause serious difficulty. Fortunately, you do not need to carry your burdens without assistance. God will help you carry them. But how is this done? It is accomplished in the mind. Practice thinking that God is actually with you. Tell him about your burdens, and believe that he relieves and assists you. Form a picture of yourself as shifting your burdens to him. He is willing to assume them and is perfectly able to do so. But, and this is most important, don’t half give them. And don’t take them back. Let God handle them. Leave them with him.

Those words, read over and over really brought me peace. When we got back from New York, I decided to follow that advice and it really worked. Saturday the moving truck arrived and Saturday night we went to sleep in our new home. Was it a perfect day? No. Were there problems? Of course there were. But the power of God’s word, his gift, helped me to cope with them and as a result my attitude was transformed.