I went for a walk the other day, actually two days in a row, and I caught a glimpse of beautiful sunsets both nights. The pictures I was able to capture just really didn’t do great justice to the reality of the moments because they were truly breathtaking.

Yet literally 2 minutes before each of these sunsets, I ran into this. Both nights. Almost in the same place. Had I not been on high alert, watching each night, those moments could have ended so differently…

The first night, I looked down, saw that little guy almost under my foot. And I jumped over him like a gazelle! Talk about an adrenaline rush. I turned around just to make sure it wasn’t a stick I’d imagined. Nope. It was real. He looked at me with his menacing, beady little eye. I laughed at myself minutes later, thinking if anyone had seen me, they might have wondered if I just had a sudden hurdle-jumping-imagination. Haha. Surely, they couldn’t see what I saw right there on the pavement.

The second night, right about the same time, I was looking and searching, just to make sure there wasn’t another. Lo and behold, there he was again. Pretty sure it was the same little guy. I walked clear around him this time and circled back, thinking he must be dead and just simply stuck on the road. Nope. He turned his head to look my way. I skedaddled quickly out of range.

Got the pictures to prove it, though. And you better believe that third night, I went way on the other side of the road. Nope. I’m not gonna give him a chance at “three times a charm” to strike me! I actually don’t think he was still there, but nope. Not gonna take a chance!

However, here is my whole point in this story: I have a choice to dwell on the beauty of the sunset or the anxiety producing copperhead. I can think about the endless possibilities of running into that little game changer again, or I can reminisce about those golden pink streaked skies and search for another awestruck evening. It’s my choice.

And that’s exactly how life is. There’s always going to be good and bad. There always going to be days when everything seems to be beautiful, and we feel like we are “topping trees.” And then, there’s gonna be others when we’d like to be buried under those trees. Those marks on our calendar will appear when we wish they’d never have come to us and when we’d like to see them never come again.

And every single time, we will have a choice to decide what and where we will place our focus. We get to determine what stays in our realm of contemplations and what we toss out.

And what stays often establishes what we see tomorrow and the next day and the next.

See, even though that third day, I cautiously walked on the other side of the road, even though I might have fought a little internal flutter of trepidation, I was intentionally going to look for that setting sun to show out just a little brighter. And just as I got ready to go chasing that sunset, my eye caught movement up on the little incline. Right about the place that mean ol’ juvenile was the night before…

Had I stayed away out of fear, walked by too quickly out of anxiety, or just simply looked away to avoid the horror, I would’ve missed this new little guy who came along to visit.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things arejust, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9

You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.

Isaiah 26:3