So Blessed!

     Hectic days filled with much to do and seemingly so little time to do it have been my recent agenda. Stress over health issues have added worry to my mind as my husband and myself have both found ourselves in the emergency room for unwanted physical concerns. Physical therapy, doctor’s appointments, cat scans and MRI’s just didn’t fit our schedules, but good health being one of our top priorities, we managed to find the necessary time.

     When an unexpected crisis interrupts your ordinary day, it is not uncommon to find yourself overly stressed and perhaps even feeling a little sorry for yourself. During one of these days, I opened an e-mail from my friend Debbie Sanders, and the ending statement that she attaches to all of her e-mails caught my attention. It stated, “Have a blessed-not-too-stressed-kind of day!” Wow! Did she know what I was going through? Of course, she didn’t, but I sat for a while and began to think on this positive statement.

     I am so blessed! Sure, things have not been going so well lately; but I needed to take a look at the bigger picture. A wonderful family who provides me abundant joy, food on my table, an awesome church family, and most of the time a healthy body are some of the major benefits that have been afforded to me. It doesn’t take much reflecting to comprehend that many people have far greater problems and devastation in their families than what I have.

     So I started counting my blessings! Some of you will well remember the old hymn that declares, “Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God has done!” As I began to enumerate the blessings in my life, my problems started looking much smaller in comparison. Although not written on paper, the list was quite lengthy in my mind. What would seem as somewhat insignificant and trivial as a blessing would actually be greatly missed if eliminated from my life.