Deficit Mentality

(Wow, thanks for the comments, guys. I feel loved :) Josh, you're the king of blogging. I'm not worthy. And Shannon--sexy picture! Ooh la la!)

I'm realizing lately how many of my issues are related to my perspective...the lenses through which I choose to see the world. If I define everything in terms of the negative--seeing things for what they are not, rather than what they are--then when is anything ever good enough? I think Dawn called it "deficit thinking" in my methods class....she warned us against having that kind of thinking toward our students--looking at all the ways they fall short of the standard, what they're not doing, how they don't meet our expectations. Instead, we were told to view them according to what they were--what they did well, what they enjoyed, what motivated them, what was good in them. I default to deficit thinking, and I'm realizing how much that is affecting other parts of my life.

And the thing that's really crazy about thinking that way is that it's totally opposite of the way God thinks of me. God is the opposite of a deficit thinker. He's a....surplus thinker! He looks at us and says, "This is who you are. Not who you think you are, but who I say you are." And when we have Christ, he gives us a brand-new identity and says "This is who you are now, and it is enough." In fact, God does more than call things by what they are. He is "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." (Rom. 4:17) He sees me not for who I'm not, and not only for who I am, but for who He knows I someday will be. That's God's perspective. I want to see the world through those lenses.