Appreciative Attitude

     I don't have many prophesies, but I did have one the other day. Jaren had two events coming up, a Thursday scout meeting (with a rare fun/educational activity) and a Saturday afternoon birthday party. We'd already planned that I'd take him to the latter, so I asked Deanne to take him to the former.

     She groaned and went into a huff.

     I said, We've been putting him off for awhile. I think he deserves it (meaning we had skipped scout camps and meetings because we were too tired or busy or didn't feel up to it.)

     She pursed her lips.

     “Will you take him?”

     She didn't answer.

     “How's about I take him and you can go to the picnic so I don't have to?”  (We'd planned for her to go shopping while Jaren and I were at the picnic since she enjoys shopping with the kids and Braden needed new clothes for his upcoming job.)

     “I'll take him,” she said, not pleased.

     Shortly after, while brushing my teeth, it came to me so I told her when I'd finished, “I'm not sure if this is a prophesy or not. Maybe it's just me. But it might be from God. One day you're going to look back at all this and realize these were the best years of your life—these past fifteen or twenty years or so. You'll think, That was great, taking Jaren and Pene around. Seeing them grow. Doing those things. Why didn't I enjoy it more then? That can change—your attitude. It's your choice.

     “Same's true with me. Whether at work, with family, or at church. Everything's the same. They're all blessings. I don't always feel that way, though. But I do want to try to enjoy them more while they last. Sighing and groaning's not going to help.”

     About Branden's new job—it's a temporary job at an established eatery. He'll have a probationary period with potential option to renew. They'll train him in most front-end (customer service) assignments with possible back-end kitchen training if he continues. He can choose to work only on weekends and the location is close enough to bus to and from school and home. His grades will have to hold or we'll pull him out, I told him. But because he's not much into academics and struggles to make As and Bs in mid-level difficulty classes, the traditional four-year college plan may not be his best option. He loves cooking, so who knows?—maybe he'll become a cook or restaurant manager one day in, say, ten to fifteen years? (The current manager appears to be in his late fifties to early sixties.) We feel it's a great opportunity for him to learn responsibility and gain confidence from holding and earning pay in a real job.

     Or he could learn that he hates manual work, customer service, or the food industry and that white-collar jobs are the way to go and thus begin giving his all in academics for the first time ever.

     Either way, we're hopeful he'll learn something (high quality standards, diligence, taking initiative, etc.) from the job. Oh yeah, best of all, he sought the job on his own initiative. (I did tell him months earlier we'd be open to him getting a job with weekend hours that didn't interfere with his studies.)