Today is February 29th; 2012 is a leap year!
It has been 3 years since I've been back in Hawai'i and have decided to stay. It is such a beautiful place, as evidenced by the double rainbow in this photo that I had taken during an aerial tour.
I only came back to Hawai'i to sell my condo--and in less than a week from now, I'll be handing the keys over to its new owner! It took me nearly 3 years to finally let go and put it on the market. By God's grace, we sold it! I didn't make any money, neither am I getting my down payment back, but at least, I didn't have to pay any money back. I'm getting a whopping $4.00 check after the transaction!!! Before, I would have been very upset with this; I did not want to let go until I knew I was going to get a decent return. I believe that God is teaching me something through this: to be thankful, always/to be thankful, anyway. If the closing date had been moved even just one day out, I would have owed money. Hence, I'm so glad I'm getting $4.00 back! I can't wait to frame that check as a reminder to myself to be thankful, always/to be thankful, anyway.
Being thankful, always/being thankful, anyway, gives me the opportunity to experience a double blessing! I can rejoice even over a $4.00 check!!!
God has blessed me tremendously for the past 30 years of my life. I could argue that the last 3 years have been one of the most challenging 3 consecutive years of my life, but I'm going to stop thinking so. I believe that such a decline in my thinking (and thus, a decline in my state of being) has been a result of my thanklessness which then led to my restlessness.
Again, I am being reminded to "be still".
Psalm 46:10 states,
"Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth."
In the last 3 years, I had been waiting on God to do something big and miraculous. Instead, I need to be still, so I can hear Him speak in a "still, small voice".
So instead of focusing on the "earthly losses", I'm going to focus on God's blessings in my life from February 2009 - February 2012:
- Opportunity to work for my former employer in 2009 got "deferred" to 2011. God slammed the door shut in 2009. I'm glad He did! I met my wonderful husband through my former employer 2.5 years later.
- Experience working for a top-tier management consulting company, giving me the opportunity to travel extensively, expand my network, and see, hear, touch, and experience things that I could only dream about, see in the movies, or read in history books.
- Ability to travel back and forth between Hawaii and the East Coast, temporarily leaving my kids with my parents, giving them a chance to bond and be a blessing to one another, as well as to others around them.
- Experience working with a Property Manager to manage one of my rentals - this taught me to let go, trust, and focus on the less mundane things in life.
- Quiet, alone time to process things that happened in my past, giving me the opportunity to heal - a humbling experience.
- Opportunities to learn to give up that which once seemed very important and to trust God to do the rest--His time, His way, i.e. my properties, assets and liabilities, my job, moving back to the mainland, etc.
- Experience being "unemployed" for almost a year (original job offer fell through after months of processing, then next job offer took months to process) - this taught me how to be humble and patient.
- Experience "receiving help" vs. typically being the one to offer and "give help", thus allowing others to be a blessing in my life.
I'm sure there are many more blessings, but this is what I came up with in the last hour.
God has a way of gently kicking us out of our comfort zone. Gently, because through it all, He still gives us comfortable "rest areas" along the way.
God wants us to grow. Most times, I find myself resisting His "cultivation", thinking I had already found my "happy spot". Instead, I should be thankful that He's actually giving me His loving attention! To make matters worse, I'd grumble and hide in my corner after the uncomfortable cultivation process, feeling all displaced, distressed, and stripped against my will. I shut down, when I should be on my knees, ready to receive His nutrients, His sunshine, His daily blessings.
Psalm 68:19 states,
"Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah."
Not only do His blessings come daily, they come in loads!
But, just like His gift of eternal life, we couldn't avail of it until we decide to receive it.
I never thought that the act of receiving required such a huge dose of humility. Make that a daily dose. Better yet, a load of doses.
I'm learning that I should take my "humble pill" daily and in large doses in order to clearly see His daily blessings and thoroughly enjoy the loads of "benefits" which He splurges on us every single day. We fail to see His day-to-day blessings due to our lack of humility, our thanklessness.
We can't be truly thankful without being sincerely humble.
Thanklessness springs from the lack or absence of humility. Thanklessness stems from pride.
As I look back at my life in the last 3 years, I see a lack of humility and an abundance of thanklessness. By God's grace, I'd like to change that this leap year. Leap years happen every 4 years. Knowing God, I'm sure that He can give me a "leap boost" to recover what I had lost in the last 3 years. But then again, He was merciful enough to bless me in other ways--I was able to "gain" in other [more important] areas while having "lost" in others. You can't really gain without having to lose things along the way, especially the less important ones.
Here's a quote from Jim Elliot, an American missionary who died in the hands of Auca Indians in Ecuador in the 1950s:
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
God was simply putting me back on track these last 3 years.
It's time to humble myself and get back on my knees. It's time to be thankful and receive His double blessings. It's time to get out, smile, and get some sun, most especially after a long, cultivation process!
