The other night, I found myself hurrying down a very dark, very empty closed road. I felt haggard after a long day that had not concluded with the usual respite of my husband walking through the door in the early evening, and I was very much awake to the cold. It seems like just a couple of days ago, I was wishing that it were jacket-weather, and suddenly, my worn hoodie was not enough to counter it.
Not in the best of moods and anxious to get to the warmth that awaited me at the road's end, I broke into an awkward, shuffling sort of run, the kind that you do when you're wearing shoes that really aren't meant even for serious walking and seem eager to jump right off your feet. Semis and cars rolled past on my left, their headlights casting a wan, evanescent light to my feet. I began to notice the smell of new asphalt (the reason for which I was walking in the first place), but even stronger was that dry November smell. Drawing in and releasing that gusty cold, in steady puffs, it occurred to me, not for the first time, but for the first time in awhile, to feel grateful for my body.
I have hesitated to post this, because I know that several of my friends, some of who read this blog, don't enjoy the same health that I've taken for granted almost every day of my life. It used to bother me that I didn't have the athletic talent to carry me to the Olympics or the miniature waist on which Hollywood sets such a high premium. Then, of course, teenage insecurities have gradually given way to adult complacency. Something about the cold and dark and solitude of that moment brought back the realization that not every pair of lungs can enjoy this exchange that were so casually repeating, and not every person has a pair of legs can, without adverse effects, propel them over the four-hundred meters or so that I had come. I know this should be obvious. It seems that all of my epiphanies these days are re-runs.
A pervasive little voice, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, whispered to me that I should not write this, that I have to right to write it. I know that I am a stranger to pain, that physical hardship and the mental and emotional struggles that often accompany it, are at this time quite beyond my comprehension. Still, I can't help but believe that to ignore the blessing of my health, even while I can't yet fully appreciate it, would be to belittle the physical hardships that others face and to show contempt for a very profound blessing.
Moreover, I believe in and look forward to a physical resurrection, in which our bodies, flawless and whole, will be reunited with our spirits. Even in the health I've enjoyed, I have sensed little fore-warnings of my mortality, the promise that age will someday brittle my bones, dull my thoughts and wither my muscles. So I celebrate the sensations I savored that night, not only as a gift, but also as a promise.
That was the second realization to which that dark road brought me - that gratitude is not confined to the present or the past. It is akin to hope, which casts its seeds into the future and the unknown. I am grateful for the promises in which I hope and for whose sake I am learning to live patiently and happily now.
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