“Why don’t you try wearing a smile for a change, and see what happens?” (ODAT, 11 January)
I used to have a frightful habit, when someone asked me how I was, of trotting out the prime difficulty of the week.
I heard someone say recently that they were facing ‘a horrendous situation’. I thought: when I judge situations to be horrendous, I’m condemning myself to a horrendous experience. If I announce something as horrendous, horrendous it will be.
I do not talk about my problems except on those occasions when I genuinely need input, and then in a clinical rather than a plaintive, lurid, or ostentatious fashion.
Once I’m implementing a solution, and I can feel it starting to work, I do not even reveal the situation. I let God work.
Once it’s done, I have my worked example of God’s power to share with others.