I have to admit it, it is sometimes unnerving to me, in my insecurity, when I am tired and discouraged, to see people post things they are thankful for. All I can hear in my head is my own whiny voice saying, "Well, lucky you, I wish I could be thankful for that." Fill in the blank with various and sundry things you're thankful for, go ahead. Now, before you think that I am jealous and envious and coveting of your blessings, let me make it clear that this is an indictment on myself. I am not unnerved by your wonderful experience or by the valuable relationships that are part of your life. No, it's all about me and how I determine my value by concluding that if I don't have the same blessings as yours, then I must not be blessed at all. It's that vestigial selfishness that is hard to die, that haunts my soul and catches me off guard when I should be looking up and around instead of the perpetual navel gazing that plagues my existence.
It's the drinking implement that I insist on defining as half empty, concentrating on the ephemeral air, so hard to grasp and hold, instead of the fluid that lies below it. And I should do well to take a deep draught of that fluid, it might very well quench that deep-seated longing for a full life. I suspect it would inundate my parched soul and would make it supple and ready to absorb the full weight of the blessings in my life. For they are many. They are different, yet they gush out from the hand that has kept me and sustained me from the day I was born, whether I knew it or not, whether I choose to recognize it or not. That pang, let it be a reminder that if I don't have what you have, if my past has not been strewn with the same flowers as yours it's just because He chose a different path for me. The river of my life might not pass through a lush, fertile valley, but through the crags, crevasses, and crashing waterfalls, it still flows and surges and rushes on. And it is full of blessings.
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