Count Your Many Blessings

Lately, I have begun to read the book “Calm My Anxious Heart”. I have had it sitting on my bookshelf to almost a year now due to my rather lack of an “anxious heart”. I decided that I would give it a try, being assured by my mother and best friend that it wouldn’t hurt to read it “preemptively”. After reading the first chapter’s contents, I examined the cover and found the subtitle to be a much more fitting title, “A Woman’s Guide to Finding Contentment”. Though I have been fortunate to not experience much anxiety during my stay here, I have found that being confined over so long a period (due to both my own willfulness and by circumstances) that my contentment was wearing thin.

As I read and meditated on the words before me, I came to have a new perspective on my life and how I have been acting. Rather than being a humble servant, at times, I have acted much more like an entitled, selfish brat. As Americans, we have been given so much that we no think of necessity but rather are “put out” when the conveniences of modern life (internet, TV, electricity, etc) are not available or don’t work as efficiently as we would like. In light of my gentle reproof and new perspective, I began to think about all the things I have been blessed with:

• Heat (as many of the people here simply do without in cold months – they wear their coats indoors and out)

• Money (despite living on an income WELL below the poverty line of America – I have more than enough to pay my expenses here and still am able to pay my monthly student loan payments)

• An apartment (so many have lost their homes due to the financial crisis)

• A job (again due to the financial crisis)

• A washing machine (so much of the world washes their clothes by hand! And a fear I had before arriving)

• Clean drinking water (many people must walk miles to get to clean drinking water, I simply have to walk to my kitchen)

• A refrigerator (this means that I also have electricity to power the refrigerator)

• A family (so many homes are broken apart by divorce, but I have been fortunate to always have a loving home and parents to look up to)

This is by no means an exhaustive list of my many, many blessings, but a grateful look at what have so much of in light of how much those around me go without.