Gratitude!

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I woke up this morning thinking how grateful I am for my life.

I am with someone I love and who loves me; we enjoy each other's company (most of the time) :-), and we share each other's burdens. D has so much integrity. And he has allowed his life experience to become wisdom, a wisdom that has sustained me greatly in the last few weeks. I chose well.

I have three wonderful children-by-marriage who are SO easy to love. Btw, Young Man with Integrity has a great job now, a job that he excels in and that he can benefit from in many ways for his future. It's amazing how my heart just leapt when he told us this good news last night. I enjoy all three children tremendously--love it when the girls come home for the weekend, love it when we spontaneously call Lovely Passionate Feminist in her dorm and drive up to have a quick lunch with her, love it when Beautiful Genuine Drummer Girl is here and we get to talk and go to movies together.

I'm doing work that I love. The context may present some problems at times, but I'm not stuck in an office trying to climb the corporate ladder, doing work that I find deadly dull. I'm a minister. Wow! It's not easy to love people who don't share your values and who treat you with disrepect, but my gosh, it's just absolutely amazing to think that it's my JOB to try to do that, to try to put aside my own false ego needs and see the Christ within them, to try to struggle authentically with the ethics involved in issues of justice for self and love for others. Not many careers offer that kind of amazing, focused opportunity to grow spiritually.

I got to study something, for ten years in seminary and graduate school, that stimulated my growth as a human being, that made me a better human being, and that continues to fascinate and mature me.

I have a home and a car and enough money to go out to eat, and to go on small vacations, and to buy a few things that my children-by-marriage will enjoy. What pleasure! Even if I end up leaving my current job and taking something that pays less, even then, we won't lose our home or not have enough to eat. I have a comfortable lifestyle.

So many other things....dear friends, beauty, kindness, even suffering which can teach me so much.

My spirit has been troubled recently with everything going on at the church I serve. But I'm so grateful that God continues to nudge me toward a better way of seeing, nudge me to not close down in anger or fear but continue to be open and appropriately vulnerable, nudge me to trust, trust, trust.

Amen.

Comments

Jan said…
Katherine, thank you for sharing your thoughts about your life, about God, and about church. Your family sounds just right with you in it. May the peace of the Lord surround you at work.
September 25, 2007 at 8:25 AM
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