Positive thinking is such a hard thing to do for someone who has lived her whole life on negative thinking.

I lived my entire life wondering when my parents were going to sit my down and tell me that we were moving, again. Packing up everything, leaving my friends, my church, my school, my comfortable life and moving to a new city with new faces, new adjustments. I never got too attached to any city that I lived in because I knew that eventually, we were going to move.

Negative thinking.

Recently, I have been "renewing my mind." Learning about grace and learning about positive thinking. There are so many things I am scared about. Instead of looking at them and thinking about the positive that can come from these unfortunate circumstances, my default is to think negatively. Because that is all I have known. My whole life has been a cycle of negative thinking.

I have been letting this negative "energy" take over me without me knowing it. Sure, some days are better than others and I can breathe deep and remember that the Lord has a plan for all of my fears, but some days I get so frustrated and anxious because I start thinking negatively. I think that I have been so caught up in that old way of thinking, that old wineskin, that I haven't even thought about trying to think positively. So on Friday, I felt claustrophobic. I felt trapped in Knoxville. I needed to get out. I thought about hammocking with some friends. Nope. Going to the park. Nope. Reading a good book and getting lost in it. Nope. Nothing sounded good, because I was still going to be in Knoxville. In the city where I just couldn't breathe.

So I left.

I packed up and went home. And as soon as I was in my mom's arms, I could breathe. There was no more pressure to hold it all together. There was no expectations that were put on me. I was just home with my family, out of Knoxville.

After crying and explaining to my mom why I came home randomly, and how I was scared about 5 million different things, she said so simply, "Why don't you think positively?" She took all the things I was scared of and turned them into positive things. When she said them in a positive way, it make so much sense and made me excited! But, because of my old ways, my old wineskins, I could only see the negative.

Positive thinking seems like such an easy concept. People, me even, say all the time "Think positively!" but if it is so apart of your life to think negatively, then thinking positively does not come naturally or easily.

I am learning to change my ways. Make new wineskins.

Matthew 9:16-17
"Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved."