So in the morning sometimes I get up in a contemplative mood. So this morning I was thinking about blessings, and how a lot of people never see the blessings they get.
You know how sometimes you can get a sharp pain, or a "stitch" in your side? I hate when that happens. For a moment I have pain. I hesitate to use the word "excruciating" because it's nowhere as bad as I've heard a kidney stone pain is, but it's unpleasant. And then the pain leaves, and for just a moment I can appreciate the absence of pain.
But then, like the pain, the awareness of the absence of the pain fades and I go on with my day.
I was thinking about 2017, and how it was a rather unremarkable year for me. Nothing much changed in my life in the last year. I went to work, I came home, I went to church, I came home, I made a few posts on a forum, I played a few video games, I made a soundtrack, just life as normal. It's hard to see blessings in all this because nothing has really happened.
And like Sherlock Holmes realizing the dog did NOT bark, I realized that was amazing. I'm living in a world with a lot of evil, and I had a rather nice year much like any others. I got through it without a lot of drama, with all my limbs, with what is left of my sanity... I never even got one death threat last year. Actually I've never had a death threat in my life. I've never had a single moment in my life when I was hungry because I didn't have any way to get food.
Sometimes the blessings are hard to see until I look at all the things that are not there. Sure I can make a long list of the things I wish WERE in my life, but there are a lot of things I definitely don't want in my life that by all rights I should have to deal with. But sometimes it's hard to appreciate the absence of undesirable elements because they are not there drawing my attention to them.
I've had a lot of blessings last year.