This began as a "Thanksgiving" post, but as is the case these days, the time to finish even the shortest of posts was just not furnished. I wrote some ok things, I guess, but I have deleted those words and have begun again. I have read and heard that this a great writing process. I'll let you be the judge of that. I'd just like to have the time to sit down and punch out a post in a single sitting. I have a few friends who rise very early each morning and accomplish amazing things (physically, spiritually, and academically) before the sun rises and in my mind and heart, I'd like to be like that too, but I just don't see it happening. For the whole month of November, I took time with each of my classes and each day had each student name something that they were thankful for. Most of the time, my students were thoughtful, but sometimes it was as most exercises like this done with kids, it went south pretty quickly. I do not find fault with them. It's easy to judge kids, but it's better to remember that they lack so many of the things that life teaches us over the years. I'm in no way saying I'm an expert about kids. I will easily say I know very little, but I do know the kids I see each day because I used to be that age and have not forgotten my own experiences.
Each morning as I drove to school in the cool dawning's of each new day, I would spend a good amount of my thirty minute commute thinking about what I was actually thankful for and the more time I spent thinking, the more I kept ending up with the idea that I'll try to explain in this post. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have such thoughts. There are probably great essays or even books about the idea and I just don't know them. If you do, maybe you'll be kind enough to point them out to me and I'll enjoy reading from someone who is a much better and more adept writer and thinker than me.
The more I thought about the items in my life that I'd admit to being thankful for, the more I kept coming back to the idea that I am completely sure that we, or maybe it's just, I, do not understand blessing. We use this word for so many things that I feel it's meaning is lost somewhere between everyone telling everyone they're around that "they're a blessing" or asking the "blessing" before a meal, or every deal or break we get is such a huge "blessing". I am in no way making light of these cases, well, maybe the first example, but not the other two, but I'm only trying to say that we use and abuse so many terms nowadays that their meanings begin to lose something. I feel I know the reason for that and that is we had reduced our language to such a small amount of known words that we're left with few options. It is a bad feeling to be lacking in the language to explain something, but I believe that is where we are at and it has happened so quickly. I'm in no way pointing fingers at those around me. I'm to be included in that horde of folks "lacking in language".
I kept coming back to this idea because I keep having this plain picture in front of me each day and that is of an event that happened around this time last year. And I'll tell you. To be honest, it is a bit uncomfortable to tell because I'd love for you to see the best in me and I'd love for us to be all able to pretend that all is well and beautiful and always has been and always will be, but we all know that, that is not the case. It was about a year ago that we lost our home. The hurt that came with that is still very present in me and in us. It's not something I love telling people. It's more of something I'd love to hide from everyone; even myself. It was during my Christmas Break and we were staying with my in-laws and Mel and I were attempting to enjoy the holidays, but so much was lying just underneath the surface and so raw inside each of us. Behind closed doors at night, we'd attempt to communicate to each other what neither of us could or were doing well. She needed a leader and she needed answers and I was rudderless and was drowning. I am not a good husband. I will tell you this freely. It is not something I'm proud of. I want to be and attempt to be, but always fall short. I do not lead my wife well, love her well, provide for her well, disciple her well, etc. And she simply and gracefully, asked me what was our plan. I did not know our plan. I had a plan and it had slowly and then quickly and so fitfully unraveled. To be more specific, it exploded. I fumbled around with really nothing to say and then lied down, but sleep was not really going to happen, and so I stood up, changed clothes, grabbed my jacket and attempted to go for a walk. I walked for a very long time that night. I feel that I'm perpetually in this motion every five years or so. I'm out walking late at night hurling words and thoughts into a clear sky because I'm once again at a place where I know nothing and have no idea about what comes next. Many moments later, I found myself sitting on the bank of a small pond in front of an old, small brick house begging God to show me what I needed to do. All I truly felt was anger, bitterness, rage, deep sadness, and severe regret. I sat there for a long, long time hoping for some direction, any direction, and all I ended up with was this numb feeling that comes to me so often when my emotions reach their max. It is an odd thing to type this out and to think that now I live in that small brick home and eat my morning meal looking out at that pond. And yet, all these moments, all these emotions, all these spoken words, all of everything wrapped together, was what I'd like to relay to you as, "the mystery of blessing". I will say I'm deeply grateful for all of this, but will easily say I do not understand even the slightest bit of it. I am continuously surrounded these days by constant mystery and I do not understand most of it, but spend large swaths of time rolling all of it around my quickly balding head.
In times of ease, it is so easy for me to look around and be quasi-thankful for everything that surrounds me. I can very casually nod this way and that and give you a little inventory of my all of my "blessings". I think back to years like 2010 when my life just about as close to perfect as I think it can get here on Earth and I would leave for a run in the evening and come back to lights in the windows of our home and a happy wife inside and I would pause for a moment a thank God for my life and in all honesty, I was, but I was also completely oblivious to all the blessings that made up my life. Or I think back to 2006 when I had just gotten married about brought my new wife back to the small home I had purchased and begun to remodel and begin attempting to live a life that was for two instead of one. I was so happy and it was easy to look at my wife or see my life beginning to take shape and stop briefly and attempt to be thankful. Or I think back to 2012 to the very first moment that I got to hold my son and although I was so very thankful for a healthy wife and a healthy, precious boy, I do not believe that I wholly understood the depth of the blessings that were being given to me. I could list so many other moments, but those are enough. And I will not say I wholly understand them now, but am slowly coming to the outline of their true meanings. Please do not get me wrong, I was truly thankful for those moments when I was swirling amongst them like a speeding gaseous particle, but am only now coming to terms with the blessings that were being given to me at the speed of life.
However, when life is throwing you a multitude of curve balls and there seems to be a very dark cloud hovering above you, I am the first to go blind to all these blessings and instantly draw up my laundry list of grievances. I am so quick to forget the blessings that are being given to me. And no, I'm not talking about just the good things. I'm talking about all things; all the facets of every moment that I'm living in and amongst. All things. One of my favorite Bible verses is Romans 8:28 because I love to know that truly, "all things are working together for the good" for me, but the older I get, the more I also know that I also have very little clue about what is truly "good" for me. And am slowly learning that most of what is good for me ends up costing me so much physically, emotionally, financially, and relationally. It is for me in these terrible, painful, and costly events that have come to me where I believe that this "mystery of blessing" truly lives. No, I have not become a true pessimist or some crazy sort of masochist, but rather just a slow learner. My mother's father, my granddad, nicknamed me Pokey so many years ago and it is so true in many, many ways.
I'm sure, if you've read this far into this post, that you're saying this is really nothing new. I get that. Everyone knows all of life, the good and the bad, is all the "stuff" we're suppose to be thankful for and know if you're like me you've heard many sermons about this and heard many people tell you much of the same. But what I'm trying to say is that but that God is in a constant state of blessing us, but much of those blessings seem more like curses. And I'm in no way saying that God curses us because that couldn't be more untrue and I'm also not saying that I throw a party for bad thing that comes my way. I guess to be honest, I am not exactly sure how to end this post except to say that I'm only beginning to see the very outline of the true mystery of blessing and to see those Biblical accounts where blessing is being showered upon a person, a people, an event as maybe they really are. How truly terrifying it must have been to be Abraham being blessed to be the father of a great and mighty nation. Or Mary to be blessed among all women. Or to be Jacob and be blessed by an angel who just maimed you. I feel I have glossed over those stories my whole life without really thinking about the imagery and idea of blessing in those stories or so many others. I am also guilty of glossing over the stories in my own life in much the same way. I still have much to think about and maybe you feel that you have just spent some of your valuable time reading nothing. I apologize. I will only say that I'm a blessed man and I only partly know what that means. I have lived a blessed life and will continue to do so. It is really not in my power to not. And hopefully, I will begin to understand the blessings that come my way.
"Come thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace,
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise,
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above,
Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of God's redeeming love..."
DAVID
