Recognize your blessings

SOUL FOOD

“An attitude of gratitude creates blessings.”

Someone sent me these words of Sir John Templeton in an e-mail

several weeks ago. The address was unfamiliar, the message unsigned.

The subject line read, “thanksgiving.”

The words read like a bumper sticker to me. But, day after day,

they’ve looped through my thoughts just the same. They’ve woven

questions about attitudes, gratitude and blessings in and out of my

brain.

Last week, my husband had a rare Friday off. The day was a small

reward, compensation for a stretch of long and difficult days he had

worked to reach a milestone, one in many, along the path of a very

demanding project.

I took the day off, too. My deadlines were met. It seemed like

providence.

In the early afternoon we walked along the ocean in Seal Beach

with Southern California’s weather at its best. Crisp, clean air

cooled our skins under the warm and low November sun. A Wedgwood sky

spilled over the mountains, peninsulas, points and islands, across

the horizon -- earth or sea -- north and east, south and west. When

we came to the end of the ocean strand, we turned up Electric Avenue.

Within a few feet a construction site came into view. “Pew,” my

husband said. A stench choked the air. “I don’t know what they’re

doing, but ... .

“Servicing portable toilets,” I said, pointing to a truck with

lettering making that clear.

“Data point,” said my husband.

“Is that engineer-speak for ‘The next time I think my job stinks,

I’ll think again’?” I asked.

“Uh huh.” He laughed. “Doesn’t everyone collect data points?”

When it comes to measuring our blessings, a lot of us do. It seems

like second nature. It starts almost as soon as we can talk.

On Saturday, I stood in the checkout line of a local store. A

small girl sat in her mother’s shopping cart ahead of me and combed

her doll’s hair.

“That is a beautiful Barbie,” I said to her. She looked up at me

then back at her doll, then looked at me again.

“My friend has two,” she said. “One of hers is a princess.”

The child’s mother rolled her eyes as they met mine. Data point, I

thought and smiled.

I picture God shaking his head at our accountings, when we measure

and number our blessings like this -- for better or worse -- against

someone else’s. In one direction lies envy, in the other, vanity --

envy inside out.

Earlier this month I got on a plane to fly home from Pensacola,

Fla. As I took my seat, the 17-year-old girl in the seat next to mine

extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Deborah,” she said with the exuberance of

someone with the world on a string.

She was on her way home from the Marine Corps Ball. She’d gone to

the dance with her fiance.

“I felt like Cinderella,” she said and showed me a 5-by-7 photo of

her and Prince Charming taken at the dance. Now, she was on her way

back to school.

She and the prince would be married in June. She would finish

college and home school their children. Together they would love and

honor the Lord.

A thunderstorm gathered around our plane. Deborah took picture

after picture of the fields of clouds with a disposable camera.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” she asked me over and over again.

If it’s possible to dance in the seat of a plane with the seat

belt fastened around you, she danced. No, things hadn’t always been

so good. But, she said, she learned from that. Good things come out

of bad things if you don’t get bitter. She was blessed, she said.

Very blessed.

I don’t quite believe Templeton’s line that an attitude of

gratitude creates blessings. But I do believe an attitude of

gratitude can open our eyes and hearts to the blessings we are given.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].