O – OPEN YOUR EYES
In the beginning of our grief, I couldn’t understand how the earth could continue to spin on its axis when my heart was so broken. I would be out somewhere around town and people would be laughing and talking. How could they do that? Don’t they know. My life has crumbled around me, and I will never be the same person again.
We would go to church and I would struggle to get out the words to “Blessed be Your Name.” I wanted to, but I was having so much trouble finding reasons to praise God.
I was so blinded by grief that I couldn’t see anything else going on around me. All I knew was that my mom was fighting cancer and my son was gone and it might be 40 or 50 years before God would call me home. I desperately needed to see something good, anything good around me. I needed to find reasons to praise God even in the hurting.
“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1
Like David, I felt as though I was in a dry and parched land with no water. I asked God to open my eyes to the good things He was doing around me. I begged Him to show me reasons to give Him praise.
Somewhere along the way, I had heard about people keeping gratitude journals. So I started one. Every night, before I fell asleep, I would list as many things as I could think of that I was grateful for that day. Some days the things I listed were very simple: the baked potato at dinner tasted really good or the fact that I didn’t have to be on the south side of the interstate one afternoon during heavy traffic. Other days those glimpses of blessings brought me hope of continued healing. The day I realized that my daughter’s smile had returned, the real one that goes all the way to her eyes. The deep gratitude for that blessing continues to bring tears to my own eyes.
God is so good.
He created this beautiful world that we live in, and we can see His fingerprints all around us: in the clouds, in the majesty of the mountains, in the sun that rises and sets, in the way our own bodies were designed.
In Psalm 119:18, David asks God to open his eyes so that he could see wonderful things in God’s law. I asked God to open my eyes to His goodness. He did. I have so many reasons to be grateful every single day and so many reasons to praise Him!
We will find whatever we are seeking. If we are looking for negativity, we will find it. It we are focused on finding blessings, we will find them.
One thing I know without a doubt, if you ask God to help you see all of His beautiful handiwork, He will open your eyes. There are so many reasons to be grateful to God. Thanking God for the small things helped even more than I anticipated. I began to see more and more blessings everyday. I felt more gratitude. I felt encouraged.
What are you grateful for today? I would love to hear what God has opened your eyes to so that you may continue to praise Him even when your heart is hurting.
With Eyes on the Cross 