Gratitude 44

I am especially grateful that things keep turning out well for me, regardless of how scary it often is when I get started with something.  Right now, I seem to have everything that for years remained like components of an elusive dream: stable housing, a steady supply of good and nutritious food to eat, stable employment, money in the bank, friends who love me (or at least seem to like me!), the means to travel and for the most part, inner peace.

I have not become a famous, nor even an established, artist, though I am still an artist.  I have not become a famous, nor even an established writer, though I am still a writer.  Even though I have left the institutional church (I might return after three years, it`s been one and a half years and it all still feels very up in the air) I am just as strongly and fervently a Christian as ever.

I am grateful that though I am still poor that I have somehow escaped from the poverty trap.  I still have very little, materially, but everything that I need.  Even though my wages have been frozen at an unethically low cipher, I still have all that I need.  I have also recovered, more or less my mental health.  I really can`t think of anything else I could possibly want.

I didn`t have the greatest start in life.  A childhood of multiple abuse from every member of my family seemed to guarantee that I would go through life a broken and pathetic loser.  Then my parents divorced and I was using illegal drugs (just pot) at fourteen.  But God intervened through the strategic placing of individuals who mentored me into a rich and amazing life as a Christian. 

I did manage to squeak through almost two years of college, and it was the lack of continuing funds that made it necessary for me to quit.  Even though I lacked credentials I was able to secure many years of employment in healthcare working in the homes of seniors, chronically and terminally ill adults.  This was particularly gratifying work in which I was able to professionally express practical care and love to particularly vulnerable individuals and I felt I could fully express my Christian faith in my work. 

I did not live in luxurious surroundings and usually had to settle for substandard and/or shared housing in housekeeping rooms, basement apartments and cheap units in rundown buildings as well as living communally or semi-communally with often interesting people in heritage and character houses.  On the whole my experience of shared and semi-shared accommodations has been rich and rewarding with the incredible plethora and often wonderful people I have been privileged to live with.  I have also been stuck sharing digs with douchebags and roommates from hell, but the good outweigh the bad by at least three to one.

I was at times incredibly poor, sometimes unemployed, often under-employed and always underpaid.  Sometimes the poverty was terrifying and many times I literally had to trust God to dig me out of the various holes I had fallen into.  Even when I became homeless, I was surrounded by supportive and caring friends who helped see me through. 

I see my difficult life as a kind of apprenticeship.  Now that I am older and entering my geezer years I can enjoy a small but decent, quiet and secure apartment where I am never asked to pay more than thirty percent of my income for rent.  I work in badly paid employment supporting people living with mental illness, trauma and addictions, but the work is incredibly rewarding, completely Christ-centred, and I always have enough to stuff into my savings account.  I travel every year for a month in Latin America where I can improve my Spanish, see old friends and make new friends.

So much has come out well in my life, despite obstacles and limitations.  The causes for complaint are always small and minor and as I approach life with an attitude of radical acceptance and gratitude the causes for complaint become even smaller.

Even though I have already been through a health crisis, I cannot think of a time in my life when I have felt this well.  At the ripe age of sixty-one.

I don't know what kind of future God will open to me, but it will contain God, the uncontainable and eternal God, and he will make it meaningful because I have gladly and joyfully abandoned myself to him.  He gives me a new map every day, only for today.  Tomorrow he takes care of... tomorrow, but only when tomorrow becomes today.