Blessings

“The pain reminds this heart that this is not our home.” – Laura Story

My dear friend who teaches chorus with me at Gettys Middle School had her students sing a song at a school event last week called “Blessings”.  I actually used this song in a post on Mother’s caringbridge website when she was very sick a few months ago.  When I think of Thanksgiving and blessings this year, my thought process will definitely be different than ever before.  I am going to actually borrow Laura Story’s words (the composer of “Blessings”) as we enter this week of Thanksgiving.

Blessings.  The meaning just may be a little different from what we are accustomed to.

Taken from Laura Story’s website : laurastorymusic.com

The album that I did three to four years ago happened right after my husband went through surgery for a brain tumor. So a lot of the ideas that I was writing about then were just very fresh, about how do we worship in the midst of trials. So fast forwarding a few years later, a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have gotten better with his health, and a lot of things have not. We pray for God to bless us, but what does it look like when I spend four or so years praying for healing for my husband that never comes? I feel like we’ve kind of gotten to a place of having to make a choice. Are we going to judge God based on our circumstances that we don’t understand, or are we going to choose to judge our circumstances based on what we know to be true about God? Not that I choose the right thing every day, but I’m learning that every morning when I wake up to choose to trust God.

And that’s what “Blessings” is about. It’s just considering that maybe the blessing is actually found in the absence of the thing that I’m praying for. No one wants a brain tumor, and no one wants a severed marriage and these things that we pray that God will reconcile. But even though this situation is definitely nothing that we ever would have asked for or prayed for, there has been a depth of intimacy with the Lord that I’m not sure I would have known apart from such a hard road that we’ve walked. And in the end, if I’ve learned to cling to that old rugged cross all the more, I truly can say that I’m a blessed person.