Gratitude

It's been a long time since I've blogged and unfortunately I do not have a lot to offer right now. A good friend of mine yesterday asked me if I was still blogging and I had to admit to her that I wasn't. So, I decided that I should keep writing. A lot has transpired in my life over the past 3 months but not all can be shared on a blog. I will only say that I have had a lot of ups and downs but I will share with you what has been pressing on my heart for a while.
In April I got tired. Just plain old tired. I was tired of my job, tired of feeling confused and tired of praying. Yup. I said it. I got tired of praying. Ever since I was about 9 years old, I always knew that I had a very deep connection with God and all things spiritual. I have relied on my faith and intuition for everything and I never took a fall because of my trust in God. I will say that over the past two years I have been tested in all areas of my life including my faith. This was the first time that I felt as if no one really heard me and I was drowning. I cannot explain what I felt but my closest description would have to be despair. I prayed for balance in many aspects of my existence but I wasn't seeing it. In the past when I asked for something from God, it seems as though it was delivered the next day.
Every morning for the past maybe 10 years I have meditated and prayed when I get out of my bed. Just to say thank you to God and place a blessing over my day and my life as a whole. In April, I decided to stop. I concluded that praying and asking wasn't helping me anyway, so why waste the energy. I discussed this with many friends and I got words of encouragement but nothing anyone said could change my mind. The days in April went on and nothing changed. My days seemed the same and I just went on without praying. I occasionally would say my regular, "Thank you, God" when something occurred that was a blessing in my eyes but other than that, I shut the whole spirituality thing down.
Then one morning I got up and looked out of my bedroom door and saw my living room. On my living room table is a picture of my Dad holding my youngest niece. When I saw this picture and looked at the rest of my surroundings, a feeling of gratitude swept across me and made me think about a lot. I thought, "Wow, look at this. My life is pretty sweet." I have a lot of friends and family who love me, I have a place to live with beautiful surroundings and I have my health. I began to look at everything this way. When I was driving to work that day , I realized that I have been in terrible work situations before but I got out of them and moved onto better things. I decided that I may not be able to change my work situation immediately but I do have the ability to change my outlook on it. I don't have to be sucked into my coworkers negativity because that place is only but a fraction of my life and this experience will pass. It seemed as though my whole disposition had changed in the blink of an eye and I was grateful. I was GRATEFUL.
What I came to realize is that during that moment of "I don't care what happens" I was surrendering. When my back was up against the wall, I decided to buckle down and pray harder. What I didn't do was let go and allow God to work it out for me. I was trying to supervise and tell Him what He was doing right and mostly what He was doing wrong. I was trying to control everything instead of just relaxing and trusting. That's what despair will do to you, I guess. I have never been the kind of person who is fearful of anyone or anything but I did fear that He wasn't hearing me and I became annoyed. So when I decided that I would hurt God by not acknowledging Him anymore, I ended up learning an even bigger lesson about life. I needed to sit back and let Him take control. All I have to do is ask for what I want and He works on delivering it to me. All I have is one job and He does the rest. Is life really that simple? I'm starting to think it is because ever since that day, I have been getting the answers to a lot of the questions that I have been asking for over two years. I have been gaining clarity on a lot of things whereas I couldn't see clearly before.
I hope that this post makes sense to someone because I am trying to convey a message that seems difficult to explain as I am writing. All I know is that I am back to praying, meditating and reading about spirituality and I see things looking up. God is good and He wants me to have the desires of my heart. He wants that for all of us. He wants us to have abundance. We just have to remain faithful and most of all thankful through the good times and the bad.