7 reasons I don’t take much for granted

1. I’m a Christian. I wasn’t raised to be a Christian. In fact, my father explicitly told me that Christianity made no sense. I love being a Christian. More on that later.

2. I’m married. I’ve been married twelve years. To the same husband: my only husband. My parents got divorced. My grandparents got divorced. My great-grandparents got divorced. I love being married, even when my husband makes me crazy. (Fortunately, he feels similarly.)

3. I live in west Michigan. I was raised in Nevada. I love west Michigan: people raise their kids here, and their kids stay here. Not reliably, but often enough that there is no shame in it. I can hope that I might live next to my adult children. Since my parents lived thousands of miles away from their parents, and I live thousands of miles away from mine, living near adult children is a dream of mine. We’ll see how that turns out.

4. I’m an Episcopalian. About to be ordained priest. But I used to be a Unitarian Universalist minister. I left in 2006. I had no idea if the Episcopalians would also believe I was called to the clergy life. I never dreamed that one day I would be an Episcopal priest.

5. I live on ten acres. When we moved here ten years ago, we weren’t sure we could have kids and we weren’t sure I could find a job, but we knew I would go nuts if I didn’t have work to do. Turned out we had two kids, I’ve always had a job, and the farm… isn’t one. This ten acres is more than we deserve.

6. Did I mention that we have two kids? And that we weren’t sure we would have any? Since I’m an only child and (on my mother’s side) an only grandchild, no words can express my gratitude for these kids.

7. Those kids go to a private Christian school. My husband and I were raised in public, secular schools. I love worshipping at school on Monday mornings.

Some days it feels like I have been journeying outside my comfort zone repeatedly for as long as I have been an adult. But most days I just feel extremely, extremely blessed.

When I made these choices, I kept on remembering Genesis 12:1-2. Abram had to leave his comfort zone behind to claim the promise of blessing. I know a little bit about how that feels. How about you?