to all behind, now deep beneath the surface
I am, due to you, now dead in your soil
birthed blooms despite night’s dark
and the lies whispered in difficulty
languaged solace
yet somehow these days align in Beauty
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Another year into life steeped in my fair share of darkened valleys and blind curves, as well as joyous heights when celebration rises without thought or prompt. For all of it, each and every day, I am thankful, as they are gifts given in breaths uninterruptedly pulled in, heartbeats pulsing life strong through my aging veins and eyes that see God’s goodness dancing all around.
I am here right where I am and should be. That is a miracle.
What can the days behind us be called but good, else they are bad in our minds alone. There lies danger in our accounting for the days we live. Even those days terrified by unexpected happenings, bruised by circumstances gone awry, are good in that they are given and you are there always in reach of Help – rescued in each hour of need. And particularly there is where we learn the most in life. Our eyes wide open searching for God amidst the details, needing Him despite our ideas of Him during peaceful times. Quite simply, yet ever profoundly, when we unearth goodness in life through the confession of all that we should be grateful for – both significant and small – we preserve a healthy life view irrespective of circumstance, which is usually as fickle as a feeling.
Gratitude cultivates an eternal perspective in our lives overlaid upon and interwoven into each shifting day and always gives clear passage for joy to bubble up from our hearts to inform our heads of what’s really going on. Practicing gratitude requires little more than our commitment to trusting God more than trusting ourselves. And that’s not a huge theological movement, only eyes that will remain open enough to see the sunrise and ponder the miracle unfolding everyday. We grow unaccustomed to recognizing little miracles because we train our eyes to gaze mostly upon what involves us. Gratitude will never thrive in the barrenness of our hearts turned inward, yet will spring wildly, uncontrollably even, within the heart opened to life teeming all around.
Maintaining a thankful heart involves our impermanence in our journey through days and years, always remembering and reminding our hearts things will not remain this way. Perhaps beyond our breathing in this life and well passed our allotted days, yet still, a day does exist and will come when all will be as God intends for it to be, absent of sorrow and disappointment and only the shadow of good. Maybe that would be a good place for you to begin practicing gratitude – thankful that God has made perfect provision for us.
I have much to be thankful for and much happiness in my current day, but I know well the speed in which life can twist. What I hold onto is God’s faithfulness – past, present and future – throughout life, which, in my days has been bittersweet, a mixture of abounding joys and genuine sadness, but above all authentically good.
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Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.