Eighteenth Week of 2010

For the wedding this past weekend, I rented a car from North White Plains, which is about an hour by the train from Grand Central. The main reason was for significant cost savings in exchange for having to get up early both Saturday and Sunday. In retrospect, there was so much more.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this weekend. The 7:30am drive on Sunday through quiet and picturesque areas of Westchester County, the return train trip with the sunlight piercing through the blossoming, buoyant trees and a walk on 125th Street from the Harlem station to Emmanuel...all made for a time to ponder upon life and count my sufferings and blessings.

From January to beginning of March, I was on Cloud 9, as they like to say. For the first time in a long time, I felt confident in God, loved by God and passionate for God. Everything else followed--my blessed time was the fountainhead for all other things I counted as blessings.

Then gradually, struggles showed up. There were no landmark events or turning points from which the time of un-blessings began. Of course, I felt blessed here and there, but I began to feel vulnerable to the evil one and my sins and distant from God. Thankfully I persevered knowing that God's face is sometimes hidden from us for our growth. Yet as I succumbed to sin more and more, my heart grew insipid toward God and I prayed for a passionate and renewed heart. I grew weary and frustrated when my heart still remained stupidly stubborn. At one point, my walk with God felt void and dark, although I was able to still pray for others and my relationships with others were going strong.

Through people around me and recent events in my life, God has taught me that He blesses in myriad ways. You see, I was hung up on this idea of Cloud 9 as being the ultimate affirmation of blessing in my walk with God. When that blessing disappeared, I grew discontent and gave way to sin. Or possibly, I gave way to sin and perhaps that blessing disappeared. But either way, I cannot insist on having that feeling of blessedness, even though that is a good thing and I should very much desire it. When the forest gives way to a desert, shall I look up the sky and curse? Shouldn't I remember that I am still going to reach the land of promise and that I am infinitely fortunate to be on this road at all?

Ultimately, the relationship with God the Almighty alone is enough. In the midst of those quiet and beautiful moments this morning, He ever so gently reminded me. In fact, perhaps the time of un-blessings was simply the time of blessings that I did not recognize because I was mired in sin and my view of His blessings. At the moment, I feel God's spirit working in me. Perhaps another start of Cloud 9, but I shall not insist on it and thank the Giver come what may.