Gratefulness

It's amazing to me how positively ungrateful I can be to God.

I am sitting here today at home, as the Ravishing Mrs. TB has been under the weather for a week, not seemingly getting much better. I have a job such that I can call my boss and say "I need to stay at home and take care of my wife" and not have a second thought about, a job where I got promoted recently and have had salary increases and bonuses, a job that at times is enjoyable (except when I want to pluck my eyes out in frustration), a job which, given everything above, allows me to sit here on an late winter day and write at home, knowing that everything is going okay and work AND that I'm still getting paid.

All of this, and then I let a stupid thing drag me down being ungrateful.

Yup. It's the Firm again. Just doing my typical "I'm bored so let's see what's up" search. Turns out it's moved to Sacramento. Dig in a little farther, and turns out the clients we could never close closed on a property - $6.2 Million. $124,000 at 2% comission.

And there goes my gratefulness out the door like a cat making a run for the outside - and getting my tail caught almost all the way through.

What is in me that can't let these things go? What is in me that makes me so ungrateful? I remember the days and nights without pay, the racking nervousness (in one case, we were out in Atlanta with clients, arrived having literally less than $1,000 in the bank, trying to get the escrow officer to fund to our account prior to checking in), the "stay home, don't get paid" scenario.

A failure, you say? Funny, I've been doing an exercise of dealing with my lack of confidence or belief in myself, and one of the items is "Everything I do fails". The remarkable thing is, with only one exception - the Firm - I am hard pressed to think of another failure of note in my life.

No, what bugs me is the not knowing. Let's call it unforgiveness, as that is what it really is. It's the feeling of not understanding why one is no longer spoken to, only that it is so. Pride as well - pride to the extent that I won't make any move (Ironically, it's two years this month since we spoke) - as I was the aggrieved one (in my mind).

So, in the spirit of making things public and dealing with them, I hereby cast aside and disavow all knowledge and concern of the Firm. How it does, is not relevant.

How grateful I am for the graces and gifts in my life, is relevant. To ignore what is in hand for a wisp long gone is as foolish as it is unproductive.