The unthankful
heart discovers no mercies; but let the
thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
— Henry Ward Beecher
Confession time: I can attest to the truth of the first half of this quote from my personal experience; no not in the distant past, it was this very week. Beginning Wednesday night, when Kristie (the realtor) called me to let me know there might be trouble getting some paperwork processed by our set closing time on Thursday. It unnerved me a bit, but I still had quite a bit of confidence that it would work out as planned. Of course I prayed. God please let it happen - that kind of prayer, just matter of fact. Then Thursday comes around and I get calls from Kristie every few hours telling me the paperwork still hasn't gone through. My heart was many things in the hours that passed oh-so-slowly, none of them thankful. I had a lot of fun (OK, not fun) blaming different people in my mind: the sellers, their real estate agent, our loan officer, the government employees who work for OHFA, etc. And not just blaming, even worse: blaming them and expecting the worst from them, suspecting their motives, intelligence, competence. I was still 'praying' if you can call it that, probably more properly termed 'whining' or 'throwing temper tantrums.' Corey's comment was a mirror to me, "Megan, this really isn't like you - you always think the best of others;" it opened my eyes to the nastiness that I was stewing in.*
Thursday passed, no house. Then Friday was another torturous day of waiting, still no house. Not that's ours yet anyway. Finally Friday I resigned myself to having to wait till Monday...which I'm still doing. And trying to have a thankful heart in all of this. It's a good thing that this hiccup, while definitely an inconvenience, doesn't throw any huge kinks in our plans: we'll still have nearly two weeks to get the house ready and move out of our apartment. We still get to buy a house! We have a bit more time now to get things packed and what-not on this end. And unrelated to the house: I have an adorable little puppy curled up on his couch (it's really just a big pillow) sleeping. Well lots of other stuff too, but mostly the puppy's cuteness is what I'm thankful for right now. :) Hopefully in the days to come, my eyes will be open to find the heavenly blessings hidden all around me.
*Yes, English Major, I know you're not supposed to put a preposition at the end of a sentence. It just sounds so stilted to say, "the nastiness in which I was stewing" :P
Yesterday I pushed all the furniture around in the living room till it started looking more like one (and less like a forest of bookshelves , boxes, and an up-ended couch), and this is what I came up with. It's a temporary arrangement until we get the basement liveable, at which point most of this stuff will migrate down there, and we get to buy new (at least to us if not really new), fancier stuff! The real camera hasn't surfaced from the rubble yet, so you get a phone picture, and I splurged a whole 15 cents to upload it, so I hope you enjoy it. :P
