Tonight I am once again grateful for simple things. Like special glasses that I wear that help me see better when I’m working at my computer…that unfortunately I left on my desk at work. So for this entire weekend I will be squinting at the screen through my regular glasses . They are trifocals, but without the line it’s hard to know where to look, and I’ve never been fully persuaded that there are actually three zones in the lenses. But alas, for the next two days I’ll have to take it on faith that there are three different areas of these glasses and do my best to write without significant eyestrain in the process. Nevertheless, here are some simple blessings for which I am grateful for this day.
I am grateful for the access I have to an abundant supply of relatively clean, “fresh” water for drinking, bathing, cooking, and the myriad other uses for water. This morning at 5:30 when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I turned on the hot water spigot and a thin stream of water dribbled out of the faucet. An hour later it was even worse, and I could barely get enough of a stream from the shower head to take a very quick five-minute “spit bath” before the water ran out completely. I walked around to various places in my house to see if I could hear any unnatural gurgling coming from any place and I could not. I also wondered if I had forgotten to pay my water bill, though I reasoned that if I had they would have warned me at least once before shutting it off. Besides it wasn’t cut off, there was still some trickling from the faucets. Eventually I decided to call the water company and when I did I got an automated message announcing that a water main had broken somewhere in our neighborhood. Once I realized that the problem was bigger than just my house and there was nothing to be done about it, I headed to work.
So often I take the availability of water for granted, until of course it is suddenly unavailable. We come into the bathroom or the kitchen of our dwelling places and assume that when we turn that knob or lift that handle that water is going to come pouring out of the faucet. Most days it does; today it did not, and that served as a reminder to me of how blessed I am to live someplace where water is instantly and automatically available and distributed throughout my house. I am also grateful to have the wherewithal to be able to pay the bill that keeps the water flowing in my home. Such a simple and yet wonderful blessing, one that many people throughout the world would love to enjoy as well.
I am grateful for it being Friday. I often come home and collapse right after I eat dinner, and I was in fact quite ready to do so again, but for an unexpected phone call and invitation from my younger sister to go out to dinner, just the two of us. So even though I’d mostly changed out of my work clothes, I put them back on (Ruth was still dressed from her work day and looked quite nice, so I decided to spruce myself back up a little bit.) We had a lovely dinner and hung out for a couple of hours (which was not nearly enough time) and caught up on a variety of things that we hadn’t had a chance to chat about. Though we will likely hang out again tomorrow, it is likely to be out at a soccer game or spending time with the whole family. It was nice to be just the two of us, which we haven’t done in a long time. The simple blessing of connecting one-on-one with a much-loved sister: it doesn’t get much better than that.
I find as I wind down toward sleep that I am aware that another week has passed. These days and weeks are hurtling by: the summer came and went almost before I knew it and before I turn around good we’ll be celebrating the autumn and winter holidays. Amazing the way time is flying. As I think about this week just past I feel an odd sense of satisfaction. It isn’t that it has been a good, solidly productive week–it actually was a “short” week, being that Monday was a holiday. No, it was a mixed-bag of a week: some parts good, some parts challenging, some parts neutral. But at the end of the week, at the end of this day I can look back at it and see that it was good. That might not make sense, but in the end it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? In this moment right now, life is good. And for that I am most simply and quietly grateful.
