Pardon my Rambling

((lovely clusters))

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated, but life just keeps moving faster than I can keep up with.  And I think too, I’ve been mulling over something, and now I can finally write about it. In the past couple of weeks, I have totally struck down by something I don’t have:

Gratitude.

Frankly put, I’m just not a grateful human being most of the time.  Recently, my job in the English department has been copying hundreds of papers as a personal assistant.  I was spending two hours a day standing in a copy room, and every night, I was coming home thinking of all that I “deserved.”  Do any of you do this? I admit it, I am guilty – after doing something that I think seems hard or torturous, I find all these little things that I think I “deserve” because I’ve had a hard day.  I deserve to eat a bunch of chocolate kisses and not to my homework. I deserve a night of drinking wine with my friends. I deserve a night not doing dishes.

Now, I honestly don’t mean to say that any of these lovely things are bad. Chocolate & wine? Are you kidding? No, instead I got to thinking about what it was that I really deserved. A friend of my family lost her husband last March, but continued to share her thoughts… This week she wrote,

“I think bitterness hijacks grief because we can’t let go of our sense of entitlement. We think, I work hard, I’m a good person; my life should go the way I want it to and I should have the things I desire. There shouldn’t be pain or heartbreak or evil because I deserve a life of ease, comfort and pleasure. That’s just simply not so.

It is odd that we only stop to ask, and sometimes demand, “Why God?!” when pain enters. During the times of plenty we don’t ask, “Why God? Why would you give me this husband? This family? This job? These friends? This home… this abundance.” (Cabell Sweeney)

As I read her words, I wanted to bite my tongue. I had been thinking of myself as Anne Hathaway, Devil Wears Prada of the English Department. How ridiculous. How silly I looked complaining about such trivial discomfort. Ungratefully, I had forgotten how blessed I am to have a job where I don’t have to pay a dime for school, and they even pay ME. I have so much to be grateful for. Just this simple thought made me consider deeply all my qualms with life, my disappointments, my frustrations… and I realized that so often my discontentment comes from a skewed view of my life. Instead of remembering that my real “wages” are death, that really I don’t deserve the wonderful life I have, I had become focused on what I thought I was entitled to… "a good, easy life." And guess what? No such entitlement.

What about you? Are there things in your life that are the seed of your discontentment? What if you step back, look at them again, and remember that all God has done for you. "Why God?" Oh, so humbling.

            It is good to give thanks to the LORD,

            to sing praises to your name, O Most High;

             to declare your steadfast love in the morning,

           and your faithfulness by night…

               For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work;

         at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

     (Psalm 92:1, 2 & 4 ESV)