Marveling & Misery

Our limb of the family tree is pretty small. Having lost my precious grandmother ("Mimi") when I was ten and living many states away from my father's parents, we had always been a small family. However, when we lost my dad seven years ago that family tree limb got even shorter, so events involving family tend to bring bubbling questions to the surface. While we were reminiscing about childhood and our lives after the reunion we attended this weekend, Mom, Kara, and I started to ask questions like: Why don't we have a big family? Why did we have to lose our dad and grandmother long before we should have? Kara then looked at me and asked, "What are the Oprah answers to these questions?"

While at Oprah's "Life You Want" Tour (yes, I'm aware of how ridiculous and cheesy it sounds), I got to hear four incredible motivational speakers in addition to Oprah. The person that immediately popped into my head when Kara asked that was Rob Bell. Here are some notes I took while listening to him speak:

• Suffering raises big questions, but so do grace, mystery, and breath.
• Success/failure, Good/bad, Right/wrong, Victory/defeat, Yes/no...Not all life's moments can be put into these categories.
• We rush to resolve problems, but it's in the mess where interesting things happen.
• You have received. God chose to be generous with you.
• Don't spend time analyzing why something went down the way it did. You are here.
• Get to the root of what the first word spoken about you is (which is that you are worthy of life) and embrace the life you already have. You are living.

The thing that stuck with me the most though was, "Suffering raises big questions, but so do grace, mystery, and breath." What this means to me is that we spend a lot of time in the wake of tragedy (and even months, years, and decades after tragedy) asking questions like "Why did this happen to me?" I think it's completely normal to be asking these questions; however, he pointed out that we have many more things to question other than why tragedy and suffering occurs. For instance, we should be asking ourselves questions like: Why am I so blessed? Why am I here? How did I end up with such an amazing job, partner, child, home, etc.? How/why did that miracle happen? How/why am I alive? I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that we are here and we are miraculous and many more amazing, wondrous, unanswerable things have happened in our lives than the tragedies we have suffered.

I realize that this sentiment to a person suffering from tragedy or who is still trying to answer the question of "why did this happen to me?" is awfully annoying. I get it. Positivity can be annoying. We can't be positive all the time. We can't expect people not to grieve, or to question, or to get annoyed and frustrated. However, I just think we need to balance the time we spend thinking about suffering and blessings.

Tomorrow my dad will have been gone seven long years. Many momentous things have happened that I wish he were here for. I could spend tomorrow wallowing and thinking about the injustice of it all, but I don't think that's what my dad would want me to do. After hearing that talk and thinking long on that quote "Suffering raises big questions, but so do grace, mystery, and breath," I'm thinking that tomorrow should be the day when I count my blessings and think about how, even though I've suffered tragedy, I have far more amazing, miraculous things in my life that deserve marveling. I'm not talking about just being grateful for being alive (which alone deserves to be marveled), but about all the other amazing, seemingly unexplainable good things that have happened in my life and are still happening in my life.

As I write this I am aware of how cheesy and silly this sounds, but you all know it's the truth. Even if it's not the truth or you don't think it is, what choices do you have? You can try to remain positive and marvel at the AWEsome things in your life, or you can lament things of the past. Which is a more enjoyable way to live? It's pretty clear where I'm headed with this. I'm thinking that on the days when we feel like it the least, we need to sit back and look at where we are, how we got to this point, and the blessings we have and marvel at how life works and how "everything is unfolding as it should." I bet if you really think about it, some amazing realizations will happen.