Unanswered Prayers

November 26, 2014
Day 210

I'd be remiss in this week of Thanksgiving if I didn't think at least once about all my unblessings in life, all the people and things that just never arrived the way I hoped they would.  They were the crushes and the obsessions, the money and the objects.  Dozens of them--people and things--could have come into my life in one way or another, and could have changed absolutely everything.

When the Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayers came out in 1990, I was still a freshman in high school.  The kinds of crushes I had back then weren't any more major than the ones I have today, but they sure felt more major.  My idiot 15-year-old brain only knew that I didn't have person x in my life, not even persons h or k, and that meant I would be forever unhappy.  And yet this one song was like a beacon of hope.  It truly transformed me. 

I've always been an obsessive-compulsive type, so whenever I start crushing hard on someone, my idiot 15-year-old brain shows up all over again.  It's thankfully gotten much better over the years, but every now and then, I start seeing the same old idiot-brain patterns showing up again, and I remember.  I remember that phrase, "unanswered prayers".

I'm not sure why, but as soon as we get away from a person or thing we desire more than life itself, it helps us see the big picture better.  Usually, it helps us see how happy we can be, and indeed are already, once we're away from person or thing x.  Every once in a while, it may even serve to remind us we belong with person or thing x.  Either way though, time and space do wonders!

So as I continue to reflect on all I'm grateful for in this life, and I thank God for all my so-called answered prayers, I thank her for all of the unanswered ones too.  I thank her for having the vision and clarity that my idiot brain and I still do not, and I'm grateful once again, as always, for the beautiful gift of perspective.