I have to be real with you, my dear reader, and if there's one thing you can trust it is that I will ALWAYS be real with you. I found myself becoming a little unsure at church this last Sunday. Now mind you, I attend a pretty small local church. We are just a little church plant with no building of our own. We mostly meet out of a local elementary school. Last Sunday because so many of the congregation were out of town for the holidays, it was decided that we would meet out of one our member's homes. It was a very intimate setting, kind of a campfire church if you will. We sang a couple songs accompanied by an acoustic guitar and launched into the sermon. The sermon this week was the kind of sermon one would expect to reflect upon prior to a new year starting.
We were challenged to look back at 2013 and think of all the things we were thankful for that happened within the year as well as to think of all our many blessings. The opportunity was provided for people to present to the congregation their 2013 blessings. Now remember we are all sitting around the living room so at one point it is brought to attention that new life was conceived in 2013 and that's something to be thankful for, a blessing.
Here's the thing, my dear reader, and I want to say this as real and as delicately as possible, I didn't really want to look back over 2013 and count my blessings. 2013 was not good to me and my family and quite frankly the last thing I wanted to do was review the year and tell everyone around me how blessed I felt. Please hear me right, I KNOW that I AM blessed beyond measure with far more than I deserve, but at that moment I didn't FEEL blessed. With the VAST exception of our beautiful Baby Blossom, when I look back at the last year I see a whole lot of tragedy. We lost Sweet Pea and began the grieving process over our first baby. My grandmother became INCREDIBLY ill and spent months in the hospital. We found out eventually that she had contracted the West Nile Virus and she passed away in August. She passed away before we knew if we were having a girl or boy and so we never got to tell her that our little girl would be her namesake. A month later, almost to the hour, my uncle passed away as well. It seemed like one tragedy after another attacked my family this year so you'll have to pardon me if the last thing I felt like doing was counting my blessings.
Can y'all just go with me here for a second? Sometimes, I feel like we as Christians trivialize brokenness and pain. Like because we are believers we should only look at the good things that happen to us and not focus on the bad. It drives me crazy... that sort of "at least" mentality. For example, my mother-in-law made a comment to me recently that really boiled me up. I know, I know, I know that she didn't mean anything ugly by it, but it still really hurt. We were talking about the loss of my grandmother and she was commenting on a picture of my mom, my grandmother, and I sitting on the side table. I opened up to her and said that it broke my heart that our daughter would never be able to have a 4 generation picture and she wouldn't know my grandmother. My mother-in-law said to me "well at least you knew your grandmother". At least... Because that makes the loss easier? Because that makes everything else better? Because that made me "get over it" faster? I hate this "at least" mentality. Nothing about losing my grandmother is a blessing. Nothing about losing my first baby is a blessing. Can't we just call it what it is and say it sucks? I feel like that provides some much more healing then always trying to look for the blessings around tragedy... When we acknowledge the pain to each other instead of pretending it doesn't exist or solely 'counting your blessings', in my mind and experience, that ministers healing. Can anyone else resonate with this? Please hear me right, I'm not saying that counting your blessings isn't a beautiful practice and a helpful one too... I'm simply saying that sometimes we need to acknowledge the pain as very real and present and not try to "at least" it, ignore it, or shove it away.
I don't listen to country music so one of you will have to help me out as far as singer and song name, but I feel like the lyrics to this one country song ring true for me right now: "God is great, but sometimes life ain't good." He is great, but we live in a fallen world and bad things happen to good people. Brokenness happens, pain happens, loss happens and it's okay to look through it all and say I don't know what was good about that, but I believe that God's will is perfect and He will work all things together for my good.
Happy New Year!
Love,
Jess
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