Stop Repressing Blessings.
Today, I ate the most delicious burger of my entire life with 6 friends. There is nothing like fellowship over food, for the best kind of friendships develop over equally good food. A dear friend of mine had his very last day of college today, so celebration was needed, and this burger place was the best spot for such an occasion. With that being said, one of the friends who joined us expressed how the biggest thing he had learned from a professor so far in college was to not suppress blessings, for that is something we unfortunately have become all too great at doing. We forget blessings, and then just as quickly, they become clouded by and covered with what seem like the endless disappointments in life. The blessings are not only suppressed, they are completely buried and now unnoticeable. It's almost as if we would rather emphasize the difficulty rather than soak in the little bits of goodness. If that is hard to swallow, good, because it was just as convicting to write.
I cannot tell you how many prayers I have prayed and then forgotten. I do not remember to follow up with the Lord, or allow Him to show me how sweetly He provided and answered. I also cannot tell you how many miraculous ways the Lord has touched my messy life, and I let the messiness itself glaze over the touched part. Now, when I say glaze, this is not a sweet glaze like one on a donut, but instead a kind of glaze that distracts from the true goodness found beneath. We suppress the blessing when we get stuck in what has been suffered. The Lord graciously reaches out to me, and then I quickly become enamored with how terrible this other situation is. That becomes the focus, that becomes my center. And before I know it, that soon directs my mood, my interactions with others, and sometimes what I believe I am worth. But what is buried underneath? The sweet gift of a loving and good Father. I suppress the blessing while re-orienting myself around the difficulty.
In no way do I want to dismiss your pain or belittle your tragedy, but we all have blessings that are left unnoticed and need resurfacing, just like my friend recognized. Once you begin the process of resurfacing your blessings, you will then begin to rediscover much more beauty than you had imagined underneath... For we have a good Heavenly Father, one who takes joy in bestowing blessing upon those who are declared His children. The question is, are we too distracted to see it? Perhaps its time to stop repressing the blessings.
"The LORD is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works." Psalm 145:9
words by Kylie Hultgren and photo by Hannah Jin