I Am by Michele Cushatt

Author:Michele Cushatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2017-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

Day 29

I AM

Blessed

How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

—MATTHEW 7:11

No one wants to spend Thanksgiving Day in the ICU. Especially not a girl who has long claimed it’s her favorite holiday. But last year I did exactly that.

After a difficult, daylong surgery to remove two-thirds of my tongue and the cancer lurking inside, doctors sent me to the intensive care unit to guard against further complications. I appreciated their attention to detail, valued their concern. But spending Thanksgiving in the hospital wasn’t my idea of a festive holiday celebration.

While the rest of America carved up turkeys and served up thick slices of pie, I lay in a hospital room enjoying a delicious IV drip. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink, not even ice chips. Instead, I listened to the sounds of nurses celebrating the holiday from their station. I smelled hints of a holiday meal being whipped up in the hospital cafeteria. Even with my door closed, I couldn’t escape the constant reminders of all I was missing.

It’s hard for a girl not to feel sorry for herself when faced with such a day. I remember looking out my window at the quiet Denver streets, imagining the memories being made inside so many cozy homes. With each beep of my many lifesaving devices, with each twinge of hunger in my stomach, I felt farther and farther away from the holiday.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude for God’s blessings, for good food, sweet relationships, and laughter. Alone in a hospital room, I enjoyed none of the above.

Captive to my circumstances, I wrestled with questions I couldn’t resolve. What if I’d never gotten sick? What if the doctors had followed a different plan? What if . . . What if . . . What if? Those were the questions on which I feasted that Thanksgiving Day. And with each question, I felt more and more sick. Like bars of a cell, the what-if’s penned me in, interfering with my ability to practice gratitude.

At times I wonder how Paul—once named Saul—managed to live without the what-if’s. In all of his New Testament writings, I don’t hear him pining away about what might’ve been. I don’t read any self-loathing for his years of misdirected zeal. I don’t see him griping about his hardships or whining about his pain. I’m sure he had his hard moments. He was human, after all, and had plenty of reasons to play the victim. Still, he didn’t look at his life as a series of unfortunate events.

“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him” (Phil. 3:8–9 NASB).

You see, blessedness is more a matter of perspective than a change of circumstance. Paul understood this, after enduring far more pain and persecution than one person should have to endure.

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