{"id":7638,"date":"2025-06-29T02:47:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T02:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7638"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","slug":"optimism-kicks-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7638","title":{"rendered":"OPTIMISM KICKS IN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think of myself as a generally optimistic person.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BUT, I have a tendency to fixate on how anything I am directly involved in could go wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I realized something kind of weird about myself this weekend: I swing from pessimism to optimism as the due date approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our church was open to switching up our approach to VBS this summer and doing a neighborhood festival instead. It was still aimed at kids, but we weren&#8217;t doing any explicit Bible lessons during our time together. It was more about simply having a positive interaction with our neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, after spending the last four weeks imagining all that could go wrong &#8211; even to the point of experiencing stress dreams at night &#8211; the Freedom Festival arrived today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And this morning my attitude flipped 180 degrees. Here&#8217;s what went through my mind all day today:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>What&#8217;s the worst that could happen?\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Even if the event flops, God is capable of bringing something good out of it.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>God is in control.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>This is a grand experiment and we will undoubtedly learn a lot.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And guess what.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We got rained on. Hard. And only a few kids showed up.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the kids and adults who did show up? They thought it was great to see the church doing something for the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not only that, but even with a lot of church members out of town this weekend, many others showed up and worked hard. There&#8217;s is no question how much these people care for those outside our fellowship.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I can&#8217;t wrap up without giving a huge shout out to Melissa. She did a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make sure the festival was the best it could be.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it all paid off. I can&#8217;t wait to see what God does with our efforts from today.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the future, I should be more consistently optimistic. Less anxious.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(P.S. If I wasn&#8217;t so wiped out, I would post some pictures. Sorry.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think of myself as a generally optimistic person.\u00a0 BUT, I have a tendency to fixate on how anything I am directly involved in could go wrong. And I realized something kind of weird about myself this weekend: I swing from pessimism to optimism as the due date approaches. Our church was open to switching [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7639,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions\/7639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}