Elul. Day Three: Blessing

After all this time, I still need to be reminded that I swim in a sea of infinite blessing.

Much of the time, I wear the world like tight, ill-fitting clothing: uncomfortable, making me fidget and focus on all the wrong things. It is so much easier to focus on the discomfort and discontent. It is, ironically, my comfort zone.

I know brokenness. I know pain. I am no stranger to loneliness or doubt or despair. I lived with them for what seems like forever.

But an odd thing happened one day, when I chose to trade despair for hope. And at first, that trade left me raw and stripped bare and vulnerable. I was still blind to the hope, still blind to the sea of blessings.

But I kept at it. I'm still not quite sure why. One day to the next, and the next after that, a long string of unbroken next days that moved me, with inexorable grace, to the unabashed certainty that I am blessed. Beyond belief, I am blessed.

There is light, and joy, and hope immeasurable.  There is pain still, but that too is a blessing, because I can feel it, feel the brokenness and fractured rhythms of my life still, but I am no longer consumed by it. I am sober, and I can hope and I am blessed.

I'm grateful, during this month of Elul, for the discipline of mindfulness. That, too, is a blessing, that obligation. Of course, the way I see it now-- it's all blessing, all of it, all the noisy, clamoring, transcendent holy mess of life. And today, of all days, on this third day of Elul, I am reminded, and I am infinitely grateful for this sea of infinite blessing.