Seeing Our Blessings

Seeing Our Blessings

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, “I tell you, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!”

Luke 7:9

Have you heard this one?

An old man lay dying. His wife of many years was sitting close by his bed, and suddenly he opened his eyes and saw her. “There you are, Agnes,” he said, “at my side again.”

“Yes, dear,” his wife said.

“Now that I am dying, Agnes,” the old man said, “I am looking back over my life, and I remember all the times you were at my side. You were there when I got my draft notice and had to go off to fight in the war. You were with me when our first house burned to the ground. When I had the accident that destroyed our car, you were there. And you were at my side when my business went bankrupt and I lost every cent I had.”

“Yes, dear,” his wife said.

The old man sighed, “I tell you, Agnes,” he said, “you’ve been a real jinx.”

This joke pokes fun at marriage, but it also makes an unintentionally helpful point about marriage: it’s easy to see your spouse in the most negative light possible. As ridiculous as it seems when you think about it, the person whom you love the most is also the person you can most easily take for granted or even worse—read negative motives where they don’t exist and make assumptions that aren’t true. It’s a good idea to attribute to your spouse the best possible motive, not the worst. When you don’t, like the man in this old joke, you choose to ignore the blessing your partner truly is.

So here’s a suggestion. Take just a couple of minutes right now to list as many blessings your partner brings into your life as you can—especially those blessings you haven’t acknowledged to him or her. Thank God for blessing you through your spouse. Then give your spouse the gift of your appreciation for his or her faithful presence in daily things like meal preparation, childcare, car maintenance, commitment to excellence at a job that provides for your family, or service to others.

We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

—Freidrich Koenig