Today was a cold, wet, grey day in Perth, one of the first signs we have had in a long while that winter is on the way. I actually find these days can be pretty depressing and my inner pessimist starts to bare his teeth.

I was working at home but had to duck out for half an hour and as I left home I noticed the ocean was like glass. There was barely a breath of wind, and just a steady drizzle, but I found myself thinking ‘perfect day for a surf…’

My favourite local wasn’t breaking. It was an outside chance that The Spot would be happening, but still worth a drive. So I threw ‘big mal’ in the back of the 4bie and shot off up the road. It was cold, grey, drizzly, small… but breaking… glassy… and there was no one out… There is never ‘no one out’ at The Spot.

I guess most folks may have looked out the window and saw a cold, grey, drizzly, ugly day… Not a day to go to the beach…

I certainly wasn’t thinking ‘surfing’ when I got up this morning, but it turned out that way. In my haste I forgot to pack the wetsuit so it was a pretty chilly hour in the water, sitting alone as shark bait, but nevertheless it was worth it.

I find life is often like this.

What you ‘see’ often determines how you behave. And sometimes we just can’t the hope in our situations because the gloominess is overwhelming. Maybe its just that we are ‘wired’ that way, but if we intentionally step back or look from a different perspective we can often see stuff that we didn’t realise was there.

The last couple of years have been a time for us to do that in our own lives. When we came back from our round Oz trip we had to pick up the pieces after being taken for 250K. That was pretty ‘grey’… Then we found ourselves in a very difficult church situation and life just wasn’t coming together as we had hoped.

But we have been blessed with some great learning in both of these situations and can now look back and see much of the good that has come from the last few years. I think some of it has come from being able to see the glimmers of hope in the sometimes overwhelming grey. I think part of it is knowing that God never abandons us and walks with us. Ok, part of it is down to being an optimist…

But chances are no matter how dark life looks for you, there will be something to get hope and joy from.

You might just need to change perspective…