Your Character Is Showing!

Some days I need to ask God to help me be grateful. There are days when being grateful is easy, but, for me, dealing with unexpected expenses sometimes requires me to force gratefulness upon myself. It always helps during trials like these for me to remind myself that at least the money is there to pay these bills; I don’t have to sell my plasma or go to work in a sweatshop. But really, I would much rather go to a five-star restaurant and spend two hundred dollars for a stellar meal instead of having to spend that money on medical care that wasn’t any fun at all.

I called my girlfriend to see how her husband is feeling: he has been in a lot of pain over the last week with a kidney stone. She made the mistake of asking me how I was doing, so she had to listen to a ten-minute diatribe about the finer points of medical insurance (like she needed to be further stressed out). I don’t do this with just anybody, but when you’ve known a person your entire life they tend to get the good with the bad in there too. The baby has developed a fascination with the cats’ water bowl and in the middle of my serious phone conversation I turned just in time to see her doing the breaststroke in their spilled drinking water. It is difficult to strip a baby out of wet pajamas, dry the toddler’s wet feet so he’ll stop begging frantically for them to be wiped, and carry on an angry rant all at the same time. Watching a baby attempt to swim on a damp floor is just too funny.

Thankfulness breeds contentment. I want to be happy. There are much, much worse things that can happen to a person. I have no control over when my body chooses to be sick or develop a chronic health problem. Nor do I have the authority to dictate the amount I would like be billed for services pertaining to my physical health and well-being. On the other hand, I can make the choice to look for the silver lining and thank God that he not only has the ability to take care of me, but that he chooses to do so because of his unfailing love for me. If I think on that I may even be able to smile while writing out those big checks.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the Lord, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him.” Psalms 34:8-9