what it means to be blessed (a synchroblog)

"we're blessed, honey, we really are," but even as i say it i'm crying and he's just looking around the house at the bare floors and the plywood pulled from our walls and our mattress in the living room where we've been sleeping. and it's hard to know where to put everyone when the bedrooms are gutted out for the sewer water.

we came home expecting much of the problem to be resolved but the area was hit by a fresh flood of storms and so we are just one of many to be flooded out. to be experiencing sleeping in the living room and clothes piled up in the office and toys and furniture lining the garage.

and the curtain caught on fire this morning, because it was too close to the lamp and the house smells like fire and flood and "we're blessed," i whisper to myself and i know we are.

i see it in the limbs and the laughter of my boys, in the food in our pantry, in the roof over our heads, but when trent gets discouraged, i do too, and when i ask him not to be angry he gets angrier and i realize he just needs me to let him be.

because faith allows us to feel. it is the belief that we are not in control, and therefore heaven is not dependent on our good works, and therefore, we can just be, some days.

he's taken the boys to the store and i'm trying to breathe deep amongst the mess and to carve out a space for living in, because even though we only have half a house right now, that's more than much of the world lives in.

and when i remember haiti and uganda and ethiopia and the pallor of a world sunk in poverty "we are blessed," i say but then i wonder, aren't they too? isn't anyone who believes in God, blessed?

but how come blessing only manifests itself physically for some of us?

my friend wrote me recently, on the back of a postcard, and she wrote, "i believe some basic things, like that God loves me, he's my father, he's caring for me, he wants to give me good gifts, he knows better than i do what a 'good gift' is. so when i pray, asking for a good thing, i know he's happy to hear it, happy to give me lavish blessings... but i know too, that the most lavish blessings are perhaps best learned in difficulty--and in that way, i see his care through good and bad circumstances since i trust that he is acting in my life and using all these things to pull me closer to himself."

i am learning to rise above my circumstances. to climb atop the piles of sewer-soaked carpet and displaced clothing and the ruined toys and to touch heaven from that high place.

and to believe it sometimes takes this mound of rubble, this mess, this hardship, to feel closer to God than if everything, indeed, was perfect.


(i am leaving for ontario in a couple of days, so am hectically re-washing and re-packing, but i wanted to do a synchroblog today, to allow you to answer the question: what does it mean to be blessed? i so look forward to reading through your entries.)