Day 113: Gas Station Cuisine

Just a big ol' shout out to gas station dining. For one, I would probably never buy a burger from a gas station. Not sure why someone else would either, seeing how their is a McDonalds within 10-15 of any location you can be at in the United States.

I'm not putting gas station food down, just that I don't think I would trust the freshness and/ or hygienic condition of the area in which the food may be prepared. I mean, do they ring up a person, handle their money then turn around and pat out a burger? Do they arrange the Marlboro display then deep fry a corn dog? Who knows? I don't, but I guess it's just the perception that makes me not want to partake of their cuisine.

Perception is very subjectional, which I have learned first hand. In my 7 3/4 years of marriage to Chandra I have taken care of our banking and finances. She told me right off she wanted me to. I always took it as she depended on me to do these things. Not that that it was a dependence in a bad way, just that she put that on me and didn't want to worry about it. I have perceived the matter differently lately. I now see it as a trust, that she actually trusts me enough to allow me to be in charge of this area of our life.

So, what changed? Not the situation or how she perceived it, but how I perceived it. That's it. It's almost like I took a burger from a BP station and took a bite. My eyes were opened to something that I had looked at in a totally different manner. So much of our lives are spent dwelling on things in the same manner, never growing, never experiencing anything differently. We grow accustomed to how things "are" and probably don't really want to look at them from a different perspective. We grow dependent on those perceptions to stay within our comfort zone and do not think about the growth that can take place if we stretch those views that we have grown dependent on.

I pray that I lose my dependence on the perceptions that I have grown to love. I want God to stretch me and allow me to see things from different angles and really see how He sees, not how I want to see. I want to see that I am blessed that my wife trusts me with our finances. I want to know that I am useful to her and appreciated instead of the false assumptions that I made almost 8 years ago that were maybe not flase, but really not 100% accurate. I want God to stretch my understanding and allow for growth in His Word and take away all of the "junk" that I learned that was not really biblical. I want to know Him more, but I want to shed the baggage of me and drink in His living water and be refreshed.