feeling grateful
This afternoon my sister’s house was burglarized. Embarrassingly, I admit, my first response was a frantic wave of fear that washed over me and left me in tears. Melissa and I had just recently talked about her husband leaving town on a business trip for a few days. He had invented a locking mechanism for one of the windows in their house and Melissa was telling me how a friend of hers was planning on staying with her and Ben until Matt returned. Flashback to a few weeks ago- Caesar’s rims to his old car are stolen from our back yard… which led to a conversation with my sister about how violated you feel when something is taken from you. Unfortunately for my sister, she lost a lot more than tire rims. This feeling of violation, of being wronged can leave us with a wide range of emotions… fear, injustice, even vengeance. My initial reaction (after realizing that tears were not going to benefit the situation… darn hormones) was to fall back on a number of conspiracy theories about where to hide valuables in your home, backing up all photos and important information and storing it away from your home computer, even installing an alarm or video surveillance in our home. Then my sister so obviously reminded me (which, of course, I would’ve realized eventually) that it’s all just stuff. She and Ben were safe- that was what was really important. Why does it often take a more tragic event for us to put life into perspective? … to realize our priorities? As much as I love all of my stuff… I love my house and all of my “things”… but, do I really need any of it? If we lost everything, would we not have friends and family to move in with… wouldn’t they share their lives with us? I’m extremely grateful that everyone is safe… that all that was lost was just “stuff”… and that my sister is level-headedly keeping things in perspective.
When things didn’t quite go our way or we just had a rough day, my mom would often ask me what I was grateful for. Here is my list tonight: I know that because God is with us, there is nothing to fear. I know that even though I love toys and trinkets and even more valuable things like jewelry and memorabilia, I could live without it. I know that I have family and friends that I love very much and I am very grateful to have them in my life. Also, I really love polka dots… they make me really happy… and possibly because Caesar doesn’t like them, I like them even more.
I love you.. I’m grateful for you… and I hope you have very sweet dreams.
