Blessed and Grateful
23 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Depression, The Growth of Wisdom Tags: Biblical worldview, blessings, depression, gratitude, love, perspective, praise, sanctity of human life
Something amazing happened at church yesterday morning, Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Our church is small, and so is its building. There are just enough of us to keep two services necessary. We usually go at 10:00 for Sunday School, and attend the second service at 11:00. Yesterday, I was giving a short presentation, based on my last blog post, to give a face – four faces – to the issue: every pregnancy, planned or unplanned, is a person waiting to be seen and heard, someone who can’t speak up on behalf of his or her right to life.
We were going to both the 8:45 and 11:00 services, and, not surprisingly, we were a little late for the first service. I have to say, when running late, it is so much easier to get the kids settled in when everyone is singing, less disruptive for those who actually got there on time.
It’s funny, but I can’t remember what the song was, but just after I started to sing, I teared up, choked up. I couldn’t quite identify the feeling. I don’t have a good word to describe what it was like. It was too intense for “pleasant” to fit, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It felt like something inside me was breaking, but being bound up for healing as it broke. It was freeing in some indefinable way.
I remained teary until, while, and after I spoke, and it wasn’t until after I spoke the first time, after I had told members of my church family that I am grateful for my life and I am grateful for the lives of my children, that I realized: it’s gratitude.
If you’ve read previous posts about the depression I recently went through, you’ll know that my ability to be grateful was severely impaired. And, to be honest, a lack of gratitude contributed to the initial, what I think of as “normal” depression, and therefore to my vulnerability to the switch in my brain being flipped and my entering that place of dark hopelessness. I finally came out of it. I could again appreciate my life, but didn’t realize how shallow that appreciation remained.
But in those moments, I was truly, wholly grateful for my life. And when I looked at my kids in their quiet busyness as the service went on, I felt that familiar wonder that usually gets lost in the day-to-day demands of parenthood. Those three children are AMAZING, unique individuals created in God’s image, designed with care and forethought to fulfill His purpose in a way only they can. The amazing fact of life was once again amazing. The incredible way their hands were working as they colored with crayons, while their hearts beat, sending life-sustaining blood throughout their bodies. I was once again amazed by them in a way I hadn’t been in too long a time, amazed that their lives started in my body, that my unique DNA was part their unique DNA. My kids could not have been born to any other woman and man, at any other time. There was a specific combination of Jeff’s and my genetic material necessary to make them the people they are. Just as each of us is, they are amazing creations, conceived at the only moment they could be.
When you stop and think of all of the possible combinations of DNA that are, have been, or will be, having the one that makes you YOU is pretty amazing. God made no mistake when He put your parts together.
But yesterday morning, it was more personal than that. I am alive. I am unique. I have given birth to three incredible and unique children. I am so blessed.
