Blessings

This past year has been one of profound change and loss for me. I had a few setbacks to say the least. I lost some precious family members and a counselor who helped me greatly in my journey to sobriety and self reliance. 

There’s not much I could have done outwardly to stave off the beasts that came popping out this past season. A change of routine. More bible reading. Getting more involved. A new hairstyle. Going to the tanning salon. More prayer perhaps?

I got sidelined by a very common ailment just as things were raming up in my life. I got a hernia and was unable to keep my normal schedule. I had to give up my place on the worship team at church and my prison ministry. What a predicament. I lost my beloved cousin, Lesandrao and my former counselor, Faith Rogers had her life taken while walking her dogs. How I dreamed of seeing her and telling her of my years of sobriety and holding down a job and being involved in so many things I’d been wanting to do for so long. 

What comes to mind among all this is all the crises I’ve lived through in the past. In my youth I was strong and vigorous and capable and totally clueless. My solution was to get drunk and forget it all. And of course, after each crisis, I find myself looking back and 
Pondering what I could have done differently. It always seems so clear. Just a word, a deed done or not done could’ve easily staved off disaster. 

Okay, I guess we all do that to some extent. What’s different now is the mileage.
The length of the road behind me. I’m more willing to accept my limitations and barriers, 
I’m not willing to give up fighting against them altogether. 

I’m still here. I’m still sober. I’m still improving. My life is expanding in spite of myself. It’s not the outer things that I’m seeking to change in this up coming season. It’s the way my spirit deals with the world around and the world within. I won’t try to pretend that everything is great when it’s not. I won’t run from sadness and anger. I won’t deny or cover up my disappointments or frustrations. 

But I will be grateful for all that I have and tend to take for granted. I will praise with my mouth and my manor of living my God and the goodness in my fellows that somehow seems to shine in the midst of the madness of the world. 

What I’ll change and do differently is count my blessings while acknowledging the challenges.