"Unhappy is the man, though he rule the world, who doesn't
consider himself supremely blessed."
~Seneca
Do you ever sit around daydreaming about the things you wished you had? I do. All the
time. I want money to pay off all my debts. I want money to remodel my house. I want
to have some kind of simple bariatric surgery to help me get rid of all this extra weight
I have. And then I want to be able to afford plastic surgery afterward to get rid of all
the excess skin I'll have. I want time and money to travel with my husband. But do I
think I'll be any better off if I am able to get all of these things? Not really. I am
so blessed just as I am right now. I have the most wonderful husband in the world. I
have good friends and a wonderful family. I have pretty good health.I have a very
comfortable home. I have a job that I love and thrive in. I have coworkers that are
the best to work with. I have so much peace in my life. Peace and happiness and joy
is worth so much more than millions of dollars.
I teach community college students. Some of my students are unemployed after years of
having a good job. Some of my students are experiencing personal tragedies of other
sorts: the death of family members, cars breaking down and no money to get them fixed,
a lot of sickness going around, and personal family struggles. Yet they come to my
classes and are prepared for tests and essays. And if you ask them if they are blessed,
they will say with 100% assuredness, "Yes! Of course!"
My husband delivered a sermon a couple of weeks ago on the book of Job. Job was a man
who was visited with every trouble imaginable. He lost his health, his family, his
riches. He lost everything he had. Yet when asked to "curse God and die." He would
not. In the rather fairytale like ending of Job's story, all is restored to him plus
some. He is wealthier than before he lost everything. He has a new family that is
larger and more impressive than the old one that perished. He has his health restored.
By all comparisons, Job is better off at the end. I don't think the moral of his story
is that if we just hang in there and refuse to curse God and die, that we will be
richly rewarded. I think the moral of Job's story is that we are blessed no matter what
our external situation is. And we can choose to be blessed or we can curse our existence
and be miserable. It's our choice.
I had a student call me last week in tears. She had been sick with the flu a couple of
weeks before. She had a sinus infection following that. Her hours were being cut at
work, and then all of a sudden, when she wasn't quite well yet, she had been asked to
work overtime. So, of course, she was doing the best she could. She was behind on her
work for my class. She was low on funds because she had to visit the doctor a couple of
times and get medicine that she couldn't afford. She was ready to work a twelve hour
shift, glad for the extra money, when her throat closed up, and she could barely swallow
or breathe. She was forced back to the doctor's office and was told she had step throat.
Her employer would not let her work. She called me and told me all of this, and she even
launched into her past troubles of when she was a child in the foster care system, with
no parents to love her. She ended by saying that her house was messy, and she didn't
have the energy to clean it up. She said she just wished she had a mother who would tell
her that everything was going to be okay. I felt great compassion for her, but I
couldn't tell her that everything was going to be okay. I could give her a time extension
on her work for my class. But that was all I could do. I hope she feels the love of God
and the blessed state that she is in despite her tragedies.
There have been times in my life when I did not feel blessed either. I felt fairly cursed,
in fact. But I realized it was just a mental state to feel cursed. And I realized I had
the power to change my mental state. One thing that helped tremendously was to take
prayer walks. I would walk and give thanks for all the things in the world that were
right with my life. I broke it down to being thankful that my legs would take me on the
walk and for the shoes on my feet and the food in my stomach and the ability to digest
that food. I walked and walked and gave thanks, and the more thankful I was, the better
I felt. It was worth more than all the therapy in the world. It was worth far more than
if I had won the lottery and had all the money I needed to take care of material things.
I would come back home with a healed heart. I highly recommend prayer walks to anyone
feeling cursed.
I still play the lottery. My husband just bought us another 2 dollar powerball ticket
last night. We haven't won yet, but we could. It's the possibility that we might that
keeps us spending those two dollars at a time. Will I be blessed if I win the lottery?
Oh, yes! Am I blessed if I never win it? Oh, yes. Because I couldn't imagine anything
as sad as having all the money, all the prestige, all the power in the world and not
feeling blessed. As the Roman philosopher Seneca said, "Unhappy is the man who rules the
whole world if he doesn't consider himself supremely blessed."
