for gratitude.

Considering that I have much to be happy for this past week, I can’t help but shake the negative space that exists between my expectation for all that is to come with the immediate state of the now and tomorrow. The seemingly wonderful idea of hope and promise of things to come, against the immediate reality of what will actually be. I’ve never truly allowed myself to let go of the unhealthy habit of “expecting the worst" in every season, and maybe because of that, I find myself consistently waiting (and wanting) for the shoe to drop, even as I continue to count my blessings.

I’ve come to realize that perhaps in my resilience, I’ve let everything taste and feel the same. Like an ostrich with it’s head in the sand, and as a natural side-effect of wanting to keep my peace against a world gone mad, I’ve grown comfortable (again) with the promise of the safe and idle; inadvertently watering the growth of my increasing indifference. I haven’t been as intentional as I once was in reconciling my own mixed feelings, and spelling out my heart the way it continues to see and adapt to an ever changing world. I’ve begun to wonder how I ever came to get here in the first place.

I am reminded of a line in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina on the nature of love and respect. I have learned in my resilience to use gratitude to cover the empty spaces where joy should be, and in the process unintentionally substituted two very distinct emotions for like. In doing so, I have shortchanged a wholehearted pursuit for joy for something less than. As I find my feet beneath me once more, I hold hope to an assurance that I may continue to learn and lean into rest once more as I return to the spaces of growth I have delayed my inevitable return to.