Mary Angel

(1/2020) This word means different things to different people. Depending on your age, your marital status, your financial state of being, and so many other factors a blessing is different for each of us. In this New Year I want to encourage all of you to look closely at your lives and see how very blessed you are.

I told a friend what I was going to write about and she told me she didn’t feel very blessed, actually she felt quite the opposite. There was nothing special about her life, she said, her kids were getting average grades, her husband was in a middle of the road job making a middle of the road salary, their house was far from their dream house. I explained to her that blessings are truly in the eye of the beholder. As we talked some more I put a little spin on what she had told me and played her life back for her. "To me, it sounds like, you have a loving family, a hard working husband and provider, kids who love you and don’t struggle in school, and a roof over your head that keeps you very comfortable, but not house poor. She was surprised at the way I looked at things. It turned out that she was truly blessed in her life.

This season of my life has brought enough stress that I have developed a rather painful spike in my temple. Although it is not constant it is fairly regular and extremely sharp. Between surgery, health issues with two of the pets, bullying in school causing anxiety and depression, my newest college student struggling in a math class and possibly losing his scholarship, and many other stressors I have found myself feeling defeated and inadequate. These are the times when I forget how blessed I really am. These are the times when I need to remind myself of how blessed I am. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, no one ever promised that. We just need to remember that even when times are difficult there are still blessings in our lives.

I often, when times are especially difficult and stressful, find it easier to think of little blessings and work my way up to bigger ones. For example, it might be easier to look at having food on the table as a blessing instead of trying to think about your next huge vacation. There is always something to feel blessed about, even if it is just being alive. Things change every day and that means there is the opportunity for bad things to get better. Although it was an expensive endeavor, especially at Christmas time, our pets will get better and we are blessed by that. My daughter is becoming a stronger person because of what she is going through. I wouldn’t wish bullying on anyone, but she is blessed to have a supportive family and a school administrator who is trying to help her. As for my surgery, it was much more difficult and expensive than I anticipated, but I am on the road to recovery and blessed by that. My son has officially not passed his math class by 2 percent and he is bummed and worried and completely stressing. He is also trying to make a plan to retake the class before the scholarship period ends in the hopes of not losing the scholarship. All of this being said, he is blessed by the fact that he has the opportunity to retake the class, hasn’t lost his scholarship, and that he had a scholarship at all.

As my son and I talked about him not passing his math class he became very melancholy. He didn’t want to talk about what was next. All he could focus on was what was done and done wrong. Sometimes a blessing can be found in simply looking to the future and the possibilities that wait there. For my son, he needed to make a plan on how to fix the problem. There were any number of class combinations that would give him the opportunity to fix his mistake and there was a blessing in having options. My daughter on the other hand often struggles with seeing the blessings in her life. We call this going down the rabbit hole. When she starts thinking about something that is far from a blessing and that leads to another sad thought and another sad thought and so on. I talk often with my children about turning your thoughts around and counting your blessings. Sometimes they tell me that I sound goofy and corny. That is what they say right up until they try thinking of the blessing in every situation. It isn’t always easy but it does work.

This is a skill that we need to start young teaching our children. In the process hopefully we too will see the blessings in our lives. The bottom line is that there is always someone worse off than you are and there is probably someone better off than you are (at least from your perspective). As for those who are worse off than you are…pray for them! As for those, that you perceive as better off or more blessed than you, please realize we don’t always see outwardly the struggles of other people and therefore shouldn’t assume that their blessings are any better than ours. This really does sound like the old if the world gives you lemons make lemonade, but why not. There are almost always two ways to look at a situation. Here is an example, your refrigerator goes up and your husband just got a bonus that will cover the cost of a new fridge. Is this sad because you wanted the bonus for other things or is this a blessing because you were provided the means to buy a new fridge.

Blessings are often in how you look at them and more often in whether you choose to count them. I hope you all find yourselves blessed in this New Year!

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