Just asking....

When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of you...(Psalm 42:8)

Do you ever end up in the mulligrubs? Oh, you don't know what mulligrubs are - let me tell you a little about that place. It is a place of despondency, sullenness, or even an ill-tempered mood. Now, answer my question honestly - do you ever end up in the mulligrubs? As hard as you tried not to end up there, your day started wrong, went on being wrong, and ended even more wrong than it started! The outcome - mulligrubs. Grumpiness is another term we may hear used for this old-fashioned word. If we were to say this of a baby, we'd say they have the 'colic'. Misery and woe - pain they cannot explain - pain no one else seems to know how to fix. The 'toned down' meaning of this term is kind of feeling 'blah', or being in a 'funk'. Truth be told, we all 'get there' from time to time, but probably have learned to mask it a little better than someone else!

In the dumps? Begin to rehearse the things you know about your Lord and see how long you can remain with feet firmly planted in those mulligrubs! When we rehearse what we know about God, we are really beginning to hone in on what we have come to know, rely upon, and stand firm in when other times have been tough or gotten us out of sorts. Have you ever started counting something, lost count, and had to go back again to 'recount' the things you were counting? When the mulligrubs hit me, I begin to 'recount' the blessings of God - the latest actions he has taken in my life, the last lesson he was teaching me - not the oldest ones, but the most recent. Why? Those are the freshest in my memory and they can actually begin to trigger the memory of those a little further back. It is like a snowball - there is a core all the other snow attaches to and as the ball begins to roll, it gets bigger and bigger until you are ready to see something built from that 'big ball'.

God's graces are kind of like a snowball - they build up what is at the core of our being and begin to roll-up into bigger 'grace balls' until something is ready to be built with the 'bigger ball' of grace we now have. By 'recounting' your blessings, you didn't make the snow that went into that ball - you just allowed it to build the layers until what you see before you is bigger than the misery and woe that was once foremost in your view. It changes our perspective and isn't that what is needed most when we are in the mulligrubs? We need a change in perspective that begins with a change in mindset - we begin to focus less on what isn't going right and begin to focus on what we know about God. It is hard to remain despondent in the presence of God, isn't it? Just askin!