Grateful

Sometimes it takes the most terrifying things to make you realize the many blessings you've been given.  That the tiny things are not to be taken for granted.  Today was a day like that.

After darkness swirling around my head and heart and soul for a night, I awoke to the wonder that life still is, that my chest still fills with breath and my heart still beats.  The trials of studies, the wonders of the soul, the failures and learning to count them as stepping stones.

"'It' only goes away when you face it and put it away."

Throwing it up doesn't make it go away.

But when you awake to your terrified self simply mired in a haze of incredulity, and stare out the window to see only... fog.  Ten million tiny drops of water suspended in the air, and the early morning light lost inside it, caught, unable to find its way out.

Dressing methodically.  Eyeliner.  Eye shadow.  Mascara.  Shirt.  Skirt. Shoes.  Down the stairs and out the door to the misty world, and no umbrella.  I briefly considered counting 40 steps up again and finding the tiny tool, but then I decided that with time and raindrops I could do better, and stepped out into the world, showered lightly with water from the air around me.

Grateful for the misting, even as I contemplated grumbling.  Grateful for moments of being dry as I walked beneath some covering.  And as I felt the last pieces of darkness, I reached out, thankful I have a God to speak with.  Who hears all, who knows all, who feels every piece of my existence even as I live it.

Grateful for phone calls, and stories and coffee and the chance to learn.  Grateful for existence on this planet.  For people to smile as I pass them.  Grateful as the sun slips from its shroud, that the yellow trees are now lit up and bright with fervour and joy, intensely lived.

I cannot express the depths of gratefulness in my tired heart and soul today.  For I still find fear in the mirror, in the eyes of others, in the ends of my days.  But I also find hope there often.  And in the dark I cling to that.

For my gratitude is not some unreality of fate, grateful to the fact that something is, but it is, in the chaos of life, a gratefulness to my precious Jesus, Creator, God.  My Truth.  My Rock.

So I cling, in gratitude, grateful He Is, and that by His sufficient grace, I breathe.