The 12 Blessings of 2014

A year ago today I made the following post on Facebook:

"Because I'm a good sport and because humor is one of my healthier coping mechanisms, I offer you the 12 gifts of 2013, obviously to the tune of the 12 days of Christmas. Now some of the numbers may be a little fudged, but you get the point. What can I say, it's been quite a year, and now we all know why I'm running away to the mountains on New Year's Eve. If I'd have had my act together I may have made this my Christmas newsletter, but obviously anything productive was a stretch - just read on. LOL. Hope it's as fun for you to read as it was for me to write 

12 gifts of 2013:

12 credits earned
11 months of counseling
10 hormone injections
9 spine adjustments
8 migraine headaches
7 papers written
6 sized gained
5 days on a roof!
4 days in the hospital
3 miscarriages
2 Trips to the ER
And an ulcer to top off the year!

(I'm beginning to think I'm not all that healthy.). Happy new year!"

I really do amuse myself sometimes... but as I go back and read this I can tell I was definitely in a "poor-me" state of mind.  I'm told by many that I need to be more thankful.  I've heard the old adage to "count your blessings" so many times I think I'd rather count the number of times I've had someone say that to me when I didn't choke them, so I can pride myself on my great self restraint.  As much as I hate to admit it, though, this little trick does work.  The problem is that so many times I simply just don't want to count my blessings.  I want to be miserable.  I want to wallow in self pity.  And since I can't trust myself to count blessings I have to ask a higher power to help me.  My prayer through 2014 has been that God would open my eyes and allow me to see the blessings in my life.  I think of how Jesus came and gave sight to the blind.  When I first heard those stories I marveled at the physical healing He offered and how incredible it would be to have never seen anything and then finally have sight.  It must have been overwhelming.  This year God was faithful to answer my prayer to take off the blinders of "poor me" self-absorption.  And I have realized in His faithfulness that not only can He make the physically blind able to see, He makes the spiritually blind able to see.  And it is overwhelming.  I've had moments this year where my heart was overflowing with gratitude and I was completely in awe of what God was doing in our lives.  And so I've decided as we prepare for New Years that I would this time around list 12 blessings:

1 My husband's new job
2 My daughter's new school
3 New friends
4 Reconnecting with old friends
5 Opportunity to teach a University course starting in January
6 Opportunity to join the praise team at church
7 Losing almost 80 pounds
8 Restarting running
9 My husband's fibromyalgia has not flared up since last winter
10 I survived another emergency surgery in March
11 2 week trip to Germany for work
12 My husband fully recovered from his concussion at the beginning of the year

I think what's amazing about how God has answered this prayer is that so many things on this list could have been listed as the burdens of 2014.  For example, I could have lamented the disruption to routine that my husband's new job and daughter's new school caused, or I could have focused on the fact that the emergency surgery was to remove my only fallopian tube and the fourth child we lost, or I even could have focused on how my husband got a horrible concussion climbing out of the hot tub during the trip to the mountains we took over New Years last year which led to stoke like symptoms and an ER visit and months of no answers from doctors.  Only by God's grace I can see the blessings in each of these events.  Hey, that reminds me of a song:  

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see"