"Most of us have been given many more blessings than we have received. We do not take time to be blessed or make space for it. We may have filled our lives so full of other things that we have no room to receive our blessings. One of my patients once told me that she has an image of us all being circled by our blessings, sometimes for years, like airplanes in a holding pattern at the airport, stacked up with no place to land. Waiting for a moment of our time, our attention. . .
It is not always so simple a thing as a lack of time. Often we may not recognize a blessings when it is given, or we may have ideas about life that keeps us from experiencing what we already have. Sometimes we become frozen in the past or unaware of the potential in the present. We may even come to feel entitled to what has been given by grace. Or we may become so caught up in what is missing in the world that we allow our hearts to break. There are many ways to feel empty in the midst of our blessings.
We can bless others only when we feel blessed ourselves. Blessing life may be more about learning how to celebrate life than learning how to fix life. It may require an appreciation of life as it is and an acceptance of much in life that we cannot understand. It may mean developing an eye for joy. It is not necessary to sit in judgment in order to move things forward, and our anger may not be the most potent tool for change. Most important, it requires the humility to know that we are not in this task of restoring the world alone. . . blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others" Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather's Blessings
this christmas our blessings overflowed. i have never had a better christmas. one where i felt more blessed and more cared for. gifts of time, snuggly socks, essential oils & life-changing books, gift certificates, tickets to a Christmas Carol, cash pressed between two hands, new-to-us toys, gift certificates for "magic," handmade gifts, gifts from parents, and two special gifts that came to our front step without tags.
after crying, i joked with tim that now we would have to be nice to everyone because we didn't know who had left blessings on our porch. the kids were so excited. "it's like someone 'boo-ed' us at christmas. we should 'boo' someone else." and so tim and i talked about 'boo'-ing someone else.
tim called me a couple of days later from walmart and mentioned that our plans for our 'boo-ing' had changed. he then told me of being in line at walmart, after an older woman. she was obviously buying toys for her grandchildren. and when the total came up she didn't have enough. she was paying with cash and the amount was more than she had. tim slid his card in the machine while she wasn't watching. the cashier then let the woman know that she was taken care of. she cried. and the cashier cried as well. and i in turn, cried while listening on the phone.
i believe that receiving opens us up for giving.
"Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which
most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have
to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting
things, which can be much harder than giving...
Accepting another person's gift is allowing
to express his feelings for you."
- Alexander McCall Smith
on my very last day of gratitude i cannot thank the people personally who thought to serve us, but i feel i would be remiss if i didn't record this experience, this tender mercy. for me, it was much more than the gifts---which were beautiful, timely, and well-chosen. it was bigger than that. for me, it restored hope and faith. that i could not see all the solutions to the future (in general) but we'd be taken care of in ways we could not plan or control. and an assurance that we were doing alright and that people loved us.
"Fixing and helping create a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected.
Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.
When we help, we become aware of our own strength. But when we serve, we don’t serve with our strength; we serve with ourselves, and we draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve; our wounds serve; even our darkness can serve. My pain is the source of my compassion; my woundedness is the key to my empathy.
Serving makes us aware of our wholeness and its power. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals: our service strengthens us as well as others. Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will renew us. In helping we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving we find a sense of gratitude." Rachel Naomi Remen
thank you all for serving me.
Comments