Look for God’s Blessings in the Little Things
22
Sometimes, the hardest chapters of our lives are also the most blessed.
A decade ago, January blew in like a chilling wind, despite the fact that I lived in sunny Southern California. My marriage collapsed a month earlier and my wife and I decided to separate. It was the start of a new year and the beginning of the end of our marriage.
A few weeks into January, I spent a long afternoon driving around Burbank, looking for a new place to live. It was one of the worst days of my life. I wanted to be doing anything else. As I drove around, I wanted to call my wife and tell her about my day. But I couldn’t do that anymore.
I eventually found a little back house on a quiet tree-lined street. It had a backyard with a brick fire pit. Trees hung over the back patio, bearing lemons and figs.
I walked in to the garage and looked around. I found a hand-drawn sketch of the Virgin Mary on a dusty shelf.
The previous tenant used the garage as an art studio and left the drawing behind. I liked the place and took the Mary sketch as confirmation I should sign a lease.
I spent the next few months acclimating to living by myself. The new house was cozy, with its arched doorways and 1950’s black-and-white tile in the kitchen. As I lay in my new bed at nights, I struggled to fight off the thought that I would never be with my wife again. After finally crying myself to sleep, I woke up each morning, sunlight streaming onto the hardwood floors, numbly facing another day.
During that time, I was a hired to write a screenplay, but had an emotional breakdown and had to pull out of the project. I simply could not turn in a high-quality draft by the required deadline. A job was lost and a professional bridge burned. I kept waking up each day.
I went for long runs through my new neighborhood, working up a sweat and praying and clearing my mind. I went to Mass every Sunday at Saint Finbar, the small, friendly neighborhood church.
I spent evenings on the back porch. I kicked my feet up by the crackling fire, enjoyed the warm breeze, and drank a Miller Lite. For hours, I walked around, bare feet on the cold grass, talking with a friend on the phone about our divorces. His encouragement helped.
At the time, I felt like I was shuffling through the days as a zombie, the walking dead.
Recently, I talked to a friend who is currently going through his own divorce. His wife and teenage daughters have moved out and he’s renting their empty rooms on Air BNB. He sits on his back porch, like I did, connecting with friends and wondering how it all went wrong. Talking with him made me recall my own early days in the wilderness of separation and divorce. And I realized something…
To my surprise, I recalled those days not with bitter pain and sadness. But with something like fondness. It was truly the worst of times but also the best of times.
Though I didn’t want to, I was emerging from an unhealthy marriage. I was spending time self-reflecting and deepening my relationship with God. I was growing.
Growing can be painful, but that’s part of the process.
In those days, there were anger and loneliness and tears and uncertainty. But there was also a roof over my head. A fire pit to warm my feet by. A sympathetic buddy to take my phone call and chat for hours.
Any day, I could pluck a lemon from my backyard tree and share fresh figs with friends who visited. I could close my eyes, let the evening breeze wash over me, and listen to the airplanes soar high above on their flight path. I had a great neighborhood church to attend. I had paved paths to run on. Life was still happening. Though I didn’t always see it at the time, the world was still “charged with the grandeur of God” as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote.
Back then, I was in a good amount of pain. But now I see that I was also awash in blessings.
As Frederick Buechner writes:
“We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints, we tend to go on as though nothing has happened.”
It’s hard to recognize God’s blessings when you’re hurting. But they are always there. Let’s not go on as though nothing has happened. Like the saints, let’s be blinded by the tiny miraculous all around us.
In the movie Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise’s character realizes that the smallest moments of his life were actually world-altering blessings. “The little things. There’s nothing bigger,” he says. It’s true.
The little things. Look for them in the midst of your pain and sorrow. For me, it was a crackling fire, a lemon tree, a jogging path, and a drawing of Mary, just to name a few.
Whatever you’re going through, God is sustaining you through these things so you can regain strength and emerge into a healthier, happier place.
Today, a decade later, my first marriage is annulled and I’m happily remarried.
I have a wonderful wife, a needy dog, and a cranky kitten. There’s a small fire pit in our backyard where we can cook hot dogs. There’s another great church where we have dear friends.
God brought me through those hard times into a better place. But looking back, now I can see that He was with me in those hard times too. In the smallest of things.
If you’re in the wilderness now, try to recognize those small, subtle blessings God is providing to help you through. Let yourself be blinded by the glimpses of God’s grandeur, care, and love.
As Romans 8:18 says: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.”
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