Living in the moment. post by Meredith Wilson.

Hi friends! So here is the story behind this blog post. My sister and I were sitting in my kitchen this morning, & she had thirty minutes left before she had to be at work. I got the great idea of having her write on my blog. She was nervous, but I was confident... this is what she wrote in only 15 minutes. You'll love it. Jess

Living in the moment is hard. Really hard. Most of the time I'm either thinking of the past or imagining what the future will look like, thats not necessarily a bad thing but when you spend most of your time thinking that way it steals from the moment that is actually happening now. I think it also produces discontentment, which is another thing I am learning to work through.

Living in the moment and learning to be content with life as it is is such a blessing and really helps you see God and how He is moving today, right now. When I was younger a lot of things happened that hurt me, emotionally and mentally so my way of coping with the emotions was to never be in the present. I would day dream about the future, and sometimes think of how I wish things could have been different in the past. That was a way i protected my heart and I don't think it was a bad thing because I was young and it was safe for me at that time but growing up and still doing that was/is dangerous. I started to realize that I was never present in the moment, I would be working and my mind would be in a completely different place. People would even mention how I seemed out of it or really distracted. When I was younger I did that intentionally to keep my mind off of painful events that took place in my life but as I got older the habit became second nature.

I didn't have to try to be somewhere else in my thoughts it just happened all the time. I would be with friends but my mind would be dwelling on past mistakes I had made or I would be worrying about how the future was going to be. It got to be so bad that no matter where I was or what I was doing in that season of my life I would imagine that life would be better if I were doing something else or if I was living someplace else. It became a very scary trap, I could never enjoy what I was doing, where I was living, or who I was with.

Theres a quote that says "you may think the grass is greener on the other side but if you take the time to water your own grass it would be just as green." That is the truth. I was so caught up in thinking about the past or the future that I wasn't being a good steward of the present blessings that God had given me, like relationships and family.

It hasn't been easy to learn, and it doesn't come naturally to live and focus on the present but God is teaching me day by day how to do it. I lost a very meaningful relationship, and hurt people along the way by not being thankful for what God has given me, but I am thankful that finally after hitting a level of "rock bottom" He is faithfully showing me the way to live with my eyes open to the day before me.

A practical step that Ive learned to take is to really focus on the people that are around me, wether its at work and its with my coworkers; listening to them and how they are doing, or the customers that come in. Taking the focus off of yourself and placing it on the people around you and taking an interest in their hearts and lives really gives you Gods perspective of how short life is and how this moment right now is all that we have.

We are not promised tomorrow or even an hour from now but we do have this moment to give ourselves wholly to God and really love Him by being good stewards of this moment, today.