Cycles

A few days ago, I had one of the best days of my life. In the space of 3 hours, I passed my driving test, replaced my dead laptop with a brand new Mac (and complimentary promotional iPod touch), and got offered the job that I had applied and interviewed for (as a healthcare assistant in a young people's psychiatric unit)!

I was pretty overwhelmed by all this good news, and didn't quite know how to react to it all! I couldn't remember the last time I had been bowled over by such generous, abundant blessing. Pretty amazing. I felt very grateful and lucky.

It has got me thinking about cycles. It is hard to break out of cycles, habits, assumptions you build over your whole life. People who work with vulnerable populations, the 'down and out', are trained in this issue well, and 'breaking cycles' is spoken of again and again. But I think it is true of most people as well.

My default thinking pattern and expectation is to be negative. I expect bad news, or little good news, I think, most of my days. I expect to fail at things, I expect disappointment and hardship and struggle. Sometimes I don't really know where these expectations come from - I have lived a privileged life and am very lucky in the worldly sense. Dave pointed out that I have passed and got everything that I have applied for in my life thus far, and I realized that factually, he is right. Yet in my head and heart I spend so much mental and emotional energy worrying about and expecting failure. And I don't quite know how to react to the good things, or how to hang onto them and gain strength and energy. I struggle to break the cycle.

When people speak about blessing and gratitude in a spiritual sense, I have these past few years gained quite a Kierkgaardian perspective on it all. I've never quite believed in hanging on to God's blessings in the sense of good things that he gives and good things that happen, and praising his name and goodness on account of those things. Because I know that they can so easily be taken away, or bad things can happen, and if you stake the notion of God's blessings and goodness on good things and events, then it becomes frail and dependent on those things, and will surely crumble in times of trouble. In my head my default is to try and understand God's goodness in a very Job-like fashion; that he is good no matter what happens, and we must praise him whether he gives or takes away.

But at this juncture I am learning about blessings, about the good things as well as well as the bad (or neutral). That God is the author and source of those things too, and it is ok to thank and praise him for those things, all the while not becoming dependent on them for one's understanding of God's unchanging nature.

So I praise God, and thank him for everything he has done.