The Other Side of Gratitude

God, I am honestly trying my best to be grateful

But my soul is bitterly consumed by a poison not my own

I am standing in the threshold of land unknown to me

A place that many have travelled

I am ensnared with a horrible feeling of guilt

I hate that I feel this way

Especially, in light of all that you bestow

I am pressed between two ways of thinking

The first is the way in which I truly feel at this moment

The second is the way that I wish I felt

It is the way I that I ought to feel

In the former I exercise the most precious of gifts you have given me:

Freedom

You allow me to plead my case

And render my feelings as true and valid

You confirm the plight of all plights

The truth that the spirit of all of humanity shares

We suffer

You suffer

(sigh)

Yet there is tear in the fabric of my soul

Our souls

Both a rip and a drop

I cannot live the duration of my days in the first of my feelings

Yes the pain is unbearable

Yes the shame leaves me perpetually naked

Yes the tears run a torrent river in my soul

And yes You are with me through it all

And yes I sometimes feel this is not true at all

(selah)

The latter is just as equal as the first

It is just as necessary

There is not an ought to that should bridge the elements

Each element needs to run its due course

But the second beckons me to examine the whole

I am shaken in my core as depression seeks to consume me

I must see beyond the veil of this particular lense of time

All of eternity does not rest here

It rests within Him

The One in whom I will rest in

Even when I do not understand the ways of his workings

So it is

We must have the former and the latter of the two

Acknowledge the suffering

Acknowledge the blessing

The two make the story complete

And someday the two will prove worthy of their lengthy collaboration