Gratefulness

It has been a long time since something moved me to my desk; compelled me enough to have to unclog my thoughts from my head before I drown in them.

It's really two things actually. And while they are not related, it comes back to the key of tonight's thoughts ~ Gratefulness.

The first was when a young girl I have never met but have made the acquaintance of, shared with me online how her family has been utterly torn apart and is in chaos. It makes me sad, that the laws that are suppose to uphold the innocence of her childhood is not doing its job in her country. It makes me angry that her dad (my so-called friend) can be so warped that he forgets, he is father to not one but five. And that the other four needs him.

I do not know how to begin to tell a 10-year-old that the silver lining in all this is that both her parents are fighting to have her in their lives. Which is better than some other kids, whose parent could forsake them, wiping them clean from memory. I do not know how to say that without having this powerful surge of anger come rushing through. Which I'm trying very hard to stem cos the dead can no longer do anything about it.

Apart from struggling to be at peace with the fact that I still bear this source of this anger which I thought was laid to rest so many months ago, I am no doubt grateful that he then chose to walk away without even a peep backwards. Cos then, today it could be my kids asking the same questions and having the same pain. I am grateful it's happening to someone else's child and not mine.

As for the second, it's been all over the news. 

Some two hours of flying time away, a modern city lays somewhat smoldering. The latest update from Reuters Live has the count as forty-two dead and three hundred over persons injured. 

Bangkok was the first city I navigated on my own at the tender age of twelve. And since then, I have gone back a number of times. Thailand has never been a place that struck me a violent and filled with terror. Even in their desperate hours post-tsunami, you could still feel the love radiating out of the devastation that the waves brought.

5 years of unrest finally came down to today's impasse. And the whole time as I watched intermittently for news updates.. and as a  Thai friend pleaded over Facebook - please pray for us, please pray for our beloved Thailand... I just kept thinking - please God, do not let this be another Tienanmen Square. 

I am pleased that the leaders of the opposing faction had the sense to surrender themselves and their cause so that more lives would not be lost. But as the news updates comes in - the passion of the angst has been stoked to a level where they are like a wild fire - beyond any one person's control. 

As I write that, I turn to look out at the sky, hoping to see the flaming redness that has been hogging it the last couple of evenings, signaling the pending rain. Praying for the families who have lost someone today, in the last six weeks is one thing. Having the fear that a place you once thought safe and familiar was and still is held tightly in the bind of terror is another. But the guilty one would be heaving a sigh of relief that no matter how much we may condemn our own country, we know that it is unlikely we would come to such a state.

As Tara of LivesayHaiti rightfully says: It is not encouraging to hear that the major change in someone's life was that they were glad the bad thing happened elsewhere.

And that is where I stand. Have been standing. Afraid of the good that lies just beyond the horizon not because we've never been blessed. Everyday, we are blessed. I AM blessed. But more because I am afraid of what I would do with this great abundance of blessings. 

And more importantly - would it change me from the ME that I have come to be and love, to the ME that I was caught in before.

In writing this, the news has updated that the death toll in Bangkok has upped one to forty-three.

In writing this, I have lost another day to grabbing my task by the horns and taming the bull.

In writing this, I have come to realise that while my gratefulness, on the surface, is that rotten things are happening to other people and other places. The deeper bit that has come is this: I am grateful that good things are happening to me BECAUSE it will empower me to go beyond just writing about my frustrations in not being able to pay-it-back. I will finally, be able to do more than just tell someone else's story in the hopes that someone who is in the position to help will. 

I will finally be able to be that someone.

So take my hand and lift me higher
Be my love and my desire
Hold me safe and honor bound
Take my heart to
Higher ground

For that realisation and clarity of thought and purpose: I am grateful.