Your Blessing Within

Dear lovely people,

“Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.” Don’t ask me the author for I don’t know but there you have a mind bugging quote read on...

I was mad that morning, my friend Francis was killing me slowly? My meeting was starting in two hours and the money he was to give me – my money for that matter had not reach me. I had to get to his house to know what hell was breaking loose. Off I went at top speed, feeling the muscles of my Benzes responding sensitively to the pressure of my leg on the pedal. About half a kilometer down the street, my tire jumped into a huge pothole, too bad for me. All the dirty water in it splashed on a lady all in yellow standing by the roadside. The impact was immediate, her yellow dress went all dirty-brown in seconds.

I slammed on the brakes, feeling all heavy with remorse. It downed on me that rage could be fatal if you can’t moderate it or inject a bit of self-mastery into the feeling. When I met the lady, she was standing there more in control of herself than I was. Empathically, I offered to do whatever will compensate for the damage but she told me in a forgiving and unruffled tone “it’s ok”. Her words cut through me like a hot knife through wax and my insistence yielded nothing. I gave her my business card and told her to call on me if she later on needed my assistance.  

Guess what, when I left her, I decided to return home and to plan otherwise for my meeting. On my way back, I started reflecting. How else could I describe such a situation if it was not a blessing? How is it possible that I cause such damage to a lady and she manages the situation better than I could ever do? What stuff was she made off?

I concluded she was summarily a blessing within. A blessing, according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, is “the act or words of one that blesses,” or “a thing conducive to happiness or welfare.” In the Bible, its first occurrence is in Genesis 1:22, when God blessed the sea creatures and birds, telling them to be fruitful and multiply in the earth. Likewise, in verse 28, God gave a similar blessing to Adam and Eve, adding that they were to exercise dominion over creation. When God called Abram to go to the Promised Land in Genesis 12:1-3, He promised to bless him, make his name great, and through him, to bless all the families of the earth. The blessings here are plainly associated with happiness and welfare, both for Abram and others. In Genesis 22:16-18, God again blesses Abram, and adds that blessing is due to his obedience to God's commands.

Get me right, the real thing was still to happen. Several months later, I had this call one early morning. Reluctantly, I picked the call and guess who was at the other end, Lanislie was the name and she turned out to be the lady in yellow I splashed dirty water onto months back. She wanted to meet me urgently saying she had an opportunity for me. Goodness I almost shouted out, what kind of a lady in such circumstance would have an opportunity for a man like me especially after all I did. When I got to her office, I was amazed. She explained in her exceptionally calm tone how from my business card, she had 'Googled' my name and read about my past evaluation works. She got interested and wanted to know if I could lead an evaluation team for the evaluation of a five-year US government funded project. You might not believe it but that’s how I landed a mega ex-ante evaluation contract.

First thing, I thought of what David wrote in Psalm 103:1-2 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” How else can we discover the magnitude of how God’s blessings are abundantly noticeable in the lives of His children? Too often, we rush through each day without counting those blessings and thanking God for them.

“…we always have a choice. We can become bitter or we can choose to become bigger and better people. When we learn to recognize that every experience can bring a blessing of some kind, our upset is softened” says Janet Bray Attwood and ‎Chris Attwood in their book Passion Test.