Days of Profound Gratitude - Thursday, 30 June 2011 - Part IV

Days of Profound Gratitude – Thursday, 30 June 2011 – Part IV

The tears I expected never came.  Had the emotional floodgates opened, I now know it would have been a futile and fallacious exercise in sentimentality instead of genuine, heartfelt emotions.  My wife and children would have been treated to a shameless display of angst and emotional torrent deserving of an Academy Award.  Rather, the Holy Spirit enabled me to tap the center of my heart and feel my most authentic emotions.  I did not feel sadness.  Instead, profound gratitude swelled up within me.  There was nothing to feel sad about or cry over.  As I mentioned earlier, despite the impoverished background in which I was reared and the house symbolized, I dreamed big dreams.  As I sat on that old porch on picturesque Carolina mornings in any season, by the grace of Almighty God, I looked beyond the horizon of nature    and the limitations of my situation.  I firmly believed God would enable me to transcend such existential impediments.  

As I sat in the car with my beloved wife and children thirty-one years after I left home, I marveled at the achievements and successes I had experienced in the intervening years.  Remarkably, many of my dreams had come true!  When I consider how unlikely it appeared when I was a child, I rejoice presently.  Although I really wished I could have shown my family the house, I am thankful to share my story with them.  I hope they are better able to understand me and any incapacities that prevent me from sharing perfectly the unquestionably perfect love that resides in my heart for them.  It is said "you do not know a person until you walk a mile in his shoes.” The truth of this adage is perhaps more formidable as it relates to family and friends.  It is easy to presume we know the people closest to us very well.  Actually, establishing substantive and loving relationships amongst spouses, siblings and extended family members requires as much work as building good, lifelong friendships.  Accordingly, I hope this pilgrimage to my place of origins better enables my wife and children to understand me and receive my unconditional love albeit from the prism of my experience.  

Nonetheless, I thank Almighty God for my journey.  I greatly appreciate His faithfulness, grace and love which most clearly materializes in the love I share with the three people who sat in the car with me.  I, as I write, continually feel profound gratitude for this experience.  Little did I know as a child that I would receive my heart's deepest desires?  As a boy when sitting in the back seat of my uncle's car, I wondered whether I would ever sit in his seat.  Would I be the man of my family?  Would I be in the driver's seat holding the well-being of my family in my hands?  Beyond the acquisition of four degrees two of which were earned at Ivy League schools, three administrative professional positions, two pastoral charges, editing a book, writing a newspaper column for seven years, serving on the boards of directors of several not for profit organizations and several other awards and successes, my family is the most valuable treasure I have.  Whereas I sought the former things and left home in pursuit of them, I really desired the wealth of a good marriage and the riches of two wonderful children.  I praise Almighty God for blessing me with family.  As we sat at the plot of land where my childhood home once stood, I simply felt amazing thanks for the true riches in my life.

As we left the neighborhood to return to the local hospital where my second oldest brother was recuperating from back surgery, I thought about how differently my life would have been had I stayed in Sumter, SC.?  This thought overwhelms me. I cannot calculate the deprivation and destitution to which my life would sink without my family and the previous list of accomplishments.  I hasten to acknowledge I equally could have experienced similar relationships and successes had I remained in South Carolina.  However, I suspect it would have been substantially limited by the predominant and generally acceptable provincialism of the town.  There are few changes in the old neighborhood.  Allowing for inflation over four decades, property values remain the same.  Possibly, the current residents who live in the global village and earn their living within the global economy are more impoverished than we were in my childhood.  When I reached the stop sign that signifies the intersection between a major state highway and Salterstown Road, I said a prayer of thanksgiving for my personal journey.  In the distance of decades, I see how profoundly bless I am.  My gratitude to God dwells within my mind and heart.  They do not require tears or any other outward display of emotion.