I started a new job recently. For about ten hours, I sit in a beautiful home, in a beautiful chair, watching a beautiful little boy sleep. He’s thirteen, and a cruel disease has robbed him of a “normal life”. Among many other unfairnesses, it primarily threatens to take his life during his dreams. And so his loving parents have hired me to sit and watch over him at night, so that everyone can get the rest they so desperately need.
I sit, I watch. And I’m never so grateful as I am in these moments for the sound of silence. The sound of nothing.
My husband has oft remarked in the last year, “People are almost never grateful for what *didn’t* happen”. In his career as a physical therapist, he often comes across people hyper focusing on a new pain or problem, while barely taking the time to begrudgingly admit the resolution of an old one. Simply put- they don’t pay attention to what *doesn’t* happen anymore. Their view of the success of their therapy becomes increasingly skewed, as they focus on the problems in front of them.
I think there’s a broader life lesson there.
We are so goaded, I think, to be in the present. “Focus on the here and now!” the billboards cry, and a person in therapist-esque glasses tells us “the present is present enough!” And while I absolutely ascribe to neither dwelling on past hurts or anxiously awaiting future suffering, I admit that sometimes in this push to focus on reality, we can forget to be grateful for an all-important component of our lives: the nothing.
What’s not there anymore or has never been. As I make a list in my head, the possibilities are endless. My children are not sick with a chronic, deadly disease. I am not in the depths of a depression. My marriage is not fragile or cold. My body does not ache (much 🤪), my home is not scary or transient. There are so many wonderful “not”s, I could spend an age pondering them.
I remember as a small child having a particularly nasty sore throat once. We’re all familiar with the sensation- that “swallowing knives” that makes you want to weep. I sat there, gingerly choking down some horrible licorice tea my mother had given me, and I made a vow. A vow akin to my wedding vows, for the depth of feeling that engendered it. I made an oath in my tiny head that whenever my throat could swallow without pain, I would appreciate it. I would swallow slowly, leisurely, loudly…. and never, ever take the simple act for granted again.
And guess what? To this day, I still occasionally catch myself swallowing and smiling, thanking God in heaven that my throat *isn’t* sore.
Is it silly? Sure. Consequential or deep? Hardly. Yet I find that it resets me into that so desperately-needed posture of gratitude, the one that puts the smile on my face and a song in my heart. During even the small times of appreciation for maladies I do not have, I find my gratitude comes blaring back to life. Because even in what I lack, I have this abundance of blessings, both material and immaterial in Christ.
So in conclusion, be thankful for everything, and be thankful for nothing. And the next time someone says, “What are you grateful for?”, answer “nothing!”, because it might just give you a laugh. It really is an easy way to sing your Saviors praise. And to enjoy the sweet peaceful silence He sometimes sends our way.
With Love,
Kelsey
Miracles Enough 