thankful

A Note to my Future Self on Thankfulness

/ Jaimie / 8 Comments
Morning view from my back porch

Morning view from my back porch

This morning I wasn’t myself. Don’t ask me who I was…just someone different.

All the things on my mind were hazy under the fog still attached to me from lack of sleep. Ambitions for coming endeavors sat numb on my tongue. Words came out but didn’t really connect with my brain. I told the Lord I really had nothing to say. No inspiration was moving my spirit to action.

In that soft and loving way He sometimes speaks, I heard him say, “How about saying thank you?” Then baby man smiled at me and I remembered stopping to watch the way the light slowly illuminated the backyard with the dawn as I walked by the window. I remembered the rise and blend of colors in the sunrise as it peeked over the trees. I thanked Him. I am so blessed!

Days come when I struggle to muster up words, divine things to move big mountains, revelations to bend will into submission to spirit. I try to inspire and encourage others and myself with grandeur, love and perspective. Maybe everything would fall into place if I woke up tomorrow and remembered to thank Him.

I write this now when things are good to remind myself on days when life seems ‘not so good’.  His faithfulness is never dictated by my circumstances. Future self, remember to give thanks in everything!

 

A Day Without Zombies

/ Jaimie / Leave a comment

I haven’t written much this week, which is unusual for me. I haven’t been able to. It’s not the ideas or inspirations haven’t come. It’s not that the words haven’t rolled through my brain singing “Crazy Train” while plummeting frantically to the caverns of lost thought below. It’s really been a joint effort between life and confusion, each one vying for my time, sucking at my mind with their imbibing tentacles. They long for me. They long to steal away the moments of vision and clarity as they once did. I’m not easily shaken. Not anymore.

This week I’ve realized how truly blessed I’ve become. That seems a strange thought in the midst of the situation that presented itself which I cannot share with you, but trust me, it was a doozy! I realized that I’ve come to a place where problems (real problems) are rare. That is such a miracle since I once lived a life in which problems (real mind blowing, “how much more can I possibly take” problems) were the norm.

Then you sink to uncomfortable numb. Feelings stop so survival can take over. Your heart beats, you breathe but laboriously in an effort to dim the panic. Breathe in, breathe out. Hide the heart another day until maybe it just disappears. Who needs emotion anyway? My place in life is among the zombies, walking dead with no heart (excerpt from poem called Zombie I wrote in 2009)

Now those days have passed and I am alive. No longer the zombie I wrote about in old poems. I am fully awake. I am free.

So this week, though life hit hard, I find myself thankful. I’m not thankful for the circumstances. I’m not thankful for the pain. But I’m thankful that I’ve entered the realm of the living. I’m thankful that I merely have a problem instead of my entire life being fraught with a myriad of problems. I’m thankful that I am confident in the God whose brought me through so much before and will bring my family through this situation with good in store. I’m thankful that no weapon formed against me or my family can ever prosper or succeed. My confidence is in a BIG God.

I’m grateful for the promise of tomorrow, a future and a hope. I’ve always believed and held tightly to that promise. But now, I’m thankful for the promise of TODAY…knowing that God is with me. The creator of the universe holds my hand and loves me deeply, passionately, and furiously. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of it. I am captured by the enormity of its effects. It leaves me breathless. 

Today I am fully alive.