Blessed, and Laughing

I laugh a lot. I worry sometimes that it's annoying, but somewhere along the way I decided that if something is actually laughable (and so many things are), I should be able to laugh at it unrestrictedly.  One of my brothers pointed out once that he could tell me outright that I laugh at everything, and that I would react by laughing.  I laughed before I could stop myself.  
Right now, you may start laughing about how you have read the word "laugh" so much in these opening sentences, that it doesn't even look right anymore.  You should definitely laugh at the way you have to google words like "laugh" sometimes, just to make sure they exist.  But back to my point.  I laughed a lot before last summer, but a year ago when I read about counting blessings, I began to laugh even more.  When I started to see how surrounded by blessings I was, my joy became fervent.

Blessed.

Ah, what a scrumptious word.  It is, in fact, a word that reminds me of the word "scrumptious."  Blessed is like...a cake.  A gooey cake with warm filling that melts deliciously over your tongue.  It's a different kind of word than "Grace," which is a delicate, beautiful, strong word, hard as iron and soft as a cloud--the meeting of all the Christian extremes that Chesterton has told me so much about in the past two years.  "Blessed" is a word you can bite into.  But they are often much the same kind of thing.

Blessings are like comfort foods, and toast with honey, and a cat sleeping on your lap, and sitting around a fire with friends, and watching both Sherlock Holmes movies with your mom when the boys are all away.

I was back at school last fall, and it had not been a good week.  As I trudged to class, I gave myself a talking to, and concluded by saying sternly to my newly repentant self, "You need to be grateful for what you have.  Look around you."  I looked up to the building I was passing, where funky architectural decisions had been made many years ago.  I pronounced my sentence upon the building firmly:

"Thank you Lord, for triangles in windows."

And, I kid you not, I couldn't help the smile that followed.  

Sometimes, we ask the Lord for good feelings, and joy, and peace, but we don't act like we really want them.  And sometimes, when we just put our feet down and refuse to be dragged into the piteous and miserable, but insist upon gratitude, the joy is certain.  

Blessings are like summer evenings on the front porch, and Red-Winged Blackbirds whistling, and a happy young brother looking like a lost boy in surely the worst clothing he could find in his closet, and a dog that always waits for you to come back home, and old reruns of Adventures in Odyssey while the flower beds get mulched.

The blessing is always there, waiting to be seen.  And I guess that's when you know what you really are.

Blessed.