Gratitude

About a week ago I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking with a new good friend here in Provo.  We covered several deep subjects, and at one point we were discussing the many bad choices we both made when we were younger and how those choices effected where, and who, we are now.  I found myself saying some things that I don't think I had ever voiced out loud, regarding the intense gratitude I feel over God's mercy and love for me.  Basically, I stated my belief that even though we are given free agency to choose our fate, I still believe that there come certain points in our lives when the Lord will step in, regardless of our choices.  The reason I believe this is because of my husband.

To put it lightly, I was a mess when Pete and I first met.  I was suffering tremendously through the end of a very painful divorce, and self-medicating my way through it by making pretty bad choices with men (even falling for a married man). It was so hard for me to fit in at church and I was so miserable and lonely that I got fed up with God and faith and stopped going to church altogether.  I was so stuck in the single-mother mindset of "I can do it all myself" that I gave up praying for help and seeking advice from others.  The valued relationship I had with my Godmother, whom I was living with, was on the verge of falling apart. I was working two jobs serving and bartending while taking 18 credit hours at ASU, commuting my 14-month old son (who was still not sleeping through the night and had been sick with pneumonia three times in four months) to and from Goodyear to Prescott Valley once a week (a three hour drive), and I slept about three to four hours a night.  It is safe to say that I was not at all making good choices regarding my body, my future, my spirituality or my soul.  And I never expected that that would be the time when God would step in and give me one of the greatest blessings I have ever known.  Yet He did.

Despite my choices, and the string of bad choices Pete was on the tail-end of when we met, I strongly believe that the Lord blessed us with each other for a reason - even though I know I didn't deserve that kind of mercy at the time.  But it took me a very long time to really understand that and to be truly grateful for it. Four years, actually.

Today is October 13th.  It was exactly seven months ago, on March 13th, when I was hit by a car going 120 MPH and was once again blessed with God's incredible mercy.  My life was spared that day, when all evidence pointed to the likelihood that I should have been dead or paralyzed.  Yet in the immediate wake of the accident, when I was suffering through an intense amount of physical pain and stress and much of my life was falling apart around me (especially financially), I did not feel gratitude.  Instead I became overwhelmed with the thought that God was punishing me for all of my choices, including my choice to marry Pete.  I was in a very dark place...but God stepped in yet again with a huge pile of incredible blessings, the biggest of which being Pete's job offer in Utah.  The feelings of being punished eventually disappeared, and in its place I have found more gratitude than I have ever felt in my entire life.

The accident, the job offer, the move to Utah, and everything that has happened since (especially the conception of our daughter), has done nothing but cultivate and grow the intense belief I now have that marrying my husband was the best decision I have ever made, and that his love is truly a blessing that the Lord gave to me because He knew me well enough to know how much I needed Pete in my life - whether I was worthy of it or not (and let's face it, I was not).  And even though I didn't really understand that for four years, both God and my incredible husband stood by me, forgave me, and loved me unconditionally until an idiot in a speeding car woke me up to how incredibly lucky I am.

The Lord's mercy and love for me, despite my selfishness, stubbornness and lack of gratitude is incredible. My husband's love, patience, kindness, and hard work that I don't ever thank him enough for is something that I will spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of.  And I feel good knowing I am finally on the road to becoming the woman both God and my husband believe I can be.