Grateful

I learned (and am still learning) that the amount of love the human heart can hold is essentially inexhaustible. This means that the love I have for one person doesn’t necessarily deplete the love I have for others.

There lies the problem: that I would have to leave so much behind.

Given my convictions, it’s a no-brainer, of course. The commandment is to cleave.

But here’s another problem: when it comes to dealing with feelings, logic provides very little consolation. Such is the case with grief, loss, heartbreak, and any intersections between the three.

Tonight my siblings and I visited the Christmas Village. They enjoyed nibbling on cheap candy canes, reveling in fake snow and watching Disney characters dancing to Top 40 dance hits.

When Santa asked my younger brother what he wanted for Christmas, he looked my way and replied, “I wish that my Ate (older sister) didn’t have to go.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

No, this isn’t just an anecdote to prove a point, my siblings are really sweet to me. The significant age gap allows for that. My sister and I have a 14-year gap, while my brother and I have a whopping 18-year age gap. Most of the time, they are mistaken to be my children. I don’t mind. They’re great kids. The honor is all mine.

In a split second, I counted all the birthdays, Christmas/New Year’s eves, graduations, school performances, weekend movie marathons, take-out pizza dinners, how-was-your-day reports and pre-bedtime cuddles I would miss.

Too much.

Then there were also these guys.

I am one of the first in my group of friends to get married. I know chances are that they secretly hate me for it, but these are the people who have seen me at my best and my worst, yet have embraced me without any hint of condemnation, only grace and love.

More on friendship, perhaps, in another post.

How I managed to muster up enough extrovert-power to have this many friends is beyond me. But I am grateful for them.

Which brings me to today, the day that calls for open acknowledgement of things that one can be thankful for, in my case, the day an adult realizes that the answer to one of life’s challenges can be found by returning to the words of a certain fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear.

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
– A.A. Milne

I am grateful for the yearnings I have to be with my family, because it means that we have an indispensable place in each other’s hearts.

Promise: Love bears all things and endures all things.

I am grateful for nostalgia for the “good old days,” because it means that I have come across true friendship – something that is so difficult, if not impossible, to come across in this age of relationship-consumerism.

Promise: A friend loves at all times.

I am grateful not only for my roots in this soil, but more so for the agonizing process of uprooting, because it means that I have grown deeper.

Promise: To everything there is a season.

A friend once told me that the cure for depression is gratitude. To be honest, I feel both. To be very honest, on most days, I feel depression more than gratitude.

However, I won’t let the former get in the way of the latter.

Easier said than done? Absolutely. But then again, such is the duty of wife.

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P.S.

Dear Followers,

It’s easy to be thankful for things that bring joy or fulfillment. This year’s challenge was for me to find breaking points and see how they call attention to areas in my life that I can be grateful for.

I’d love to know if you have anything special that you are thankful for this year.

Cheers,
C

P.P.S.

Since we are, after all, taking a step back and taking time to be grateful, I would like to thank each and every one of you for following Such Is Wife. Two posts up and already I’ve received a huge surge of followers. What’s up with that? No idea. But, thanks. 😉 I am now under greater pressure to regulate what I think, and consequently write about – it’s great practice for my marriage!