Blessings

Hi Debbie,

I was on my way home from work last night and was letting my search go through the radio stations and I heard this song on a Christian station and stopped it and listened to it. Every word is exactly what I've been feeling this week.

Blessings by Laura Story

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home,
It's not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise



I had to pause for a second to remember the day Christian left. It felt like months ago and it was just this past Tuesday morning he flew out. It had only been four days. I was so shocked by this realization. How can time just stand still like that? I've gotten to talk to him three times already. He called on Wednesday night then again Friday night and last night I got a good 20 minutes with him. I can already see such a change in him. When he lived across town he hardly ever called me and he never said he loved me and now he does. It's a big treat to talk to each other and it just warms my heart that he's realizing how important family really is. It's so hard that some of the lessons we have to learn in life come at such a great cost isn't it? We sacrifice our time together so we can value it. We have to lose a loved one to know just what they meant to us in our lives. Why can't we know these things without experiencing true loss?

I can't help but think of my older son who is living with such bitterness and anger toward me and my daughter. It breaks my heart not to be able to hug him now and be with him because I need my children around me especially now. He doesn't know what we know. He can't begin to see all he's missing by his attitude and his emotional distance. I can see such a difference between my older son who is 25 and my younger one who is 19. Christian is kind, forgiving and sensitive and so wise for his years and Garrison is good inside but so stubborn and willful. Garrison is lonely and depressed and justifies his distance from all of us by lying to himself about our motives and reasons for being truthful with him. It would be so much easier to sweep things under the rug and not deal with reality. A lot of people live that way. I used to live that way. I don't anymore because who does it serve? Eventually you get lost in the pretending and don't know who you are. Truth is a cleaning of the soul and it feels good even if it causes some who like to pretend to become so uncomfortable around you that they choose not to be.

So I'm just taking it one day at a time. I'm not crying all the time anymore. I'm picturing Christian as much as I can. He was an obedient child and I know he will do what is expected of him and people will like him. He told me yesterday he doesn't want his drill Sargent to even know his name until he's done with basic training. LOL He got his uniform and boots and hat. He said the food isn't bad and he's getting enough sleep to do what needs to be done. He likes it so far and has met some nice guys. I don't think he's as scared as he was before he left. It was probably the uncertainty of it all and not knowing what was going to happen tomorrow. It reminds me of this poem I have always loved by William Earnest Henley called Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.



For a long time I read this every day. When I was in college and when I was living by myself and learning how to cope with life. It became kind of a theme. That nothing would defeat me and I would be able to endure it with grace. That's what I hope for now. That as the next three months go by I will grow and progress right along with my little soldier. I still wonder how my mother and my grandmother ever did this.


Talk to you sometime soon,

Love,

Adele