Count Your Blessings

Within this home that is inviting our labor and our investment, there is a sign on a pantry door - a small piece of country knick-knack. It says simply, "Count Your Blessings" and is decorated at the upper edges with two small country homes, one on each side.

Count your blessings. That is a good commandment and a wonderful spiritual discipline. Gratitude - I am discovering - is a thing cultivated.

So, I sat down the other day with a pen and journal, and I followed the instruction.

Count your blessings:
one, I have life and
the richness of those
who love me.
two, there is work for my hands
to do,
a community to empty myself into.
three, a son with cheeks like peach-skin
slapped by a northern wind.

four: food in abundance.

five: deliverance from my bondage

And the doe and her fawns walk through
Hutcheson's valley: six.

And my daughter, pulling back from my wife's breast,
looking fresh into my eyes,
hers a deep cobalt blue: seven.

Too many.
I have more than enough.

Wes