Count Your Blessings

I am a BIG fan of Tom's. My heart breaks for him and his family right now. Feel Free to email Tom and wish him peace, I am sure he would love to hear from us.

It's an old saying that's right on the money: count your blessings.

I've been realizing my blessings with renewed intensity this week. Everyone in my family has. My cousin Sean, only 33, was in a terrible accident that he did not survive.

We were stunned when we got the news, and we have been reeling at the loss. We can't imagine the pain my aunt and uncle and cousins are going through, and we know the funeral, to be held two days after I submit this piece, is going to be a difficult one.

Tragedy brings folks together and we certainly reached out to each other. We talked and commiserated and tried to make sense of something that never will make sense to any of us.

But the unpleasantness of the tragedy caused us to do something most of us fail to do: count our blessings.

There are a lot of people in my extended family. At any given moment, someone is probably driving somewhere, and yet in my 43 years, this is the first and only tragedy to touch any of us. That's an amazing statistic.

In my life, I lost both grandmothers, my Uncle Mike, my Uncle Jimmy and now Sean. We suffered another tragedy when my brother in law's father died in a plane accident four years ago. As much as I miss them all, it's still amazing that my blessings outweigh my losses by overwhelming margins.

In my immediate family, I have five sisters, five brothers in law, two parents, 17 nieces and nephews and two great nieces. In my extended family there are 65. Nobody is suffering a life-threatening illness. Nobody has a health issue to speak of, with the exception of my father whose issue, thankfully, is nearly behind him.

I think, too, of all the dumb things I did as a testosterone-crazed teen, how I used to see how fast the car would go, or how I'd recreate the James Rockford maneuver, burning rubber down the road. So many things could have gone wrong that never did.

Some twenty years ago, my sister Kathy and her fiancÃ© were in a wreck, but neither was hurt badly, though they could have been. Their car was totaled, but they walked away. They went on to have three children and a good life together.

The thing is that every time you walk out the door â€“ every time you head on a trip â€“ it really could be the last time you walk out the door, the last trip, the last time your friends or relatives see you, or the last time you see them.

We know this in our bones, but we make an industry out of forgetting it. The tricky part of this life is in the remembering â€“ remembering how blessed we are when our blessings are right under our noses, remembering to dwell on what we have rather than what we don't.

That would make for a good New Year's resolution. Imagine that you are 100 years old, looking back on your life. Imagine thinking through all of the things you would have done differently.

Would you spend more time at the office or more time with your kids? Would you work harder at being kind and less time being rude? Would spend more on charity and less going out to dinner? Would you take every effort to spend time with your friends and family and less time huddled in front of the television?

The answers would be obvious from the vantage point of 100, but too many of us forget them daily as we stumble through life. We must do a better job remembering.

At 33, Sean was just getting warmed up. He was strong and athletic and had a handsomeness that caused women to swoon. He was close to his brothers and sisters and parents, and he doted on his daughter. He had so much yet to experience and give, and it makes no sense to me that God would take him so early.

Only one thing makes sense: count your blessings.

Be sure to visit Tom's site and here is a link to some of Tom's other columns: Tom Purcell

beautiful picture!!

At a store today I started to complain about the kids being too noisy with their Christmas toys, I stopped quick when i remembered that the clerk had lost her 21-year-old daughter and 14-month-old granddaughter in a fire just this last October..She would love to hear each and every noise those precious ones would have made this Christmas!!
Upon returning home, I learned that my 8-year-old niece suffered a severe seizure that put her in "code blue" she is on a respirator now...again her parents would revel in the noise that I was ready to whine about!! very humbling!

i am so sorry to hear about your niece.

counting our blessings...today my father was asked to perform a funeral for a 56 yr old man that was having dental work done and never woke up from the anesthesia. he left behind a wife, a mother with alzheimer's and 6 children aged 21-14. i had major surgery two weeks ago and had no trouble with waking up. we never know what God has planned for us.

counting my blessings...

Have to agree with this.....

Several weeks ago, Me and my family were facing pretty bad financial problems, as the guy I was working for, had refused to pay me, and I had not made much of anything since about the day after Thanksgiving. Needless to say, Christmas did not look like it was going to be very fun. I began to feel bad about things, and such. My mother of course reminded me that even though we were and still are) having financial troubles (the area where my family gets fought the hardest), we were ALL healthy, and God has kept us all safe through the year, preventing some VERY serious injuries from besetting all of us( my mother and sister were in 2 wrecks, neither was injured, the car was nearly totaled), and I was spared from several accidents and such.

Well, a couple of weeks before Christmas, my financial situation changed, a LOT. A job literally came looking for ME. I was able to make a decent amount for the last 2 weeks before Christmas, enough for Christmas presents and to pay bills, with a little left over for saving. True, I have been cheated out of over $400 from the previous job, but they will be the ones to suffer, not me, as their business appears to be folding.

So, I have been counting my blessings. I know that God protects me and my family. He has proved this recently, several times. And I, too did dumb things as a young guy, like driving fast,, shooting fireworks out of the car, playing with hydrochloric acid , magnesium ribbon, gunpowder and other chemicals, with NO supervision, etc, etc. Through it all, God watched over me, and continues to do so. My finances are getting better, but still far from good, but I am confident that God will meet all of my and my families needs.

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