Been given a gift today?

Been given a gift today?

Tim Connor

There are those who choose to see only the darkness during the brightest day and there are those who can see only the light in life’s darkest hours. Your life is filled with choices that lead you to your enlightenment or keep you stuck in the ambiguity of adversity, disillusionment, distress, and discouragement.

I don’t know where you are on your life’s path. I can never know the depths of your pain and struggle. It is impossible for me to comprehend your personal battles as you face another day. I can only tell you that, no matter what you are facing this day or this year, in the end your life experience was a gift from God, and what you did with it was your gift to Him.

Please keep in mind that each of us is offered many different gifts by life. Some people may not have been blessed with sight, but they have been given the gift of time. Others may not have been given the gift of freedom but they are blessed with the gift of choice; and others may not have been given the gift of family, but have been given the gift of health. Some may not have been given the gift of wealth and opportunity, but they have been given the gift of another day.

I have never met anyone in my world travels who has not been the beneficiary of numerous life gifts. You are no different. No matter what your circumstances, situations, life position, age, gender, or nationality, you have been given many gifts. The secret to happiness is to be filled with gratitude for the gifts you have been given and not complain about the ones that are absent in your life.

Life’s gifts don’t always come when we want them or think we need them, but they are always there in the wings waiting to appear at just that moment when we least expect them. You and I cannot manipulate God or life into giving us the gifts we think we need or deserve on our terms. The lessons life is constantly trying to teach each of us are patience, faith, belief, and gratitude for what we have been given.

It is often much easier to focus on what is missing, what we want, or what is wrong in our life than on what is coming or what could be. This is one of life’s harshest tests: gratitude for what we have been given while we wait to discover if we will be given more or less, better or worse in the future.

There don’t seem to be any rules. No one – and I repeat, no one – goes through life without some gifts. Maybe the ones they have been given are not the ones they feel they deserve or desire, but they are, gifts nonetheless. How can failure be a gift? How can cancer be a gift? How can loneliness be a gift? How can discouragement be a gift? It’s not the gift we are given that matters but how we use it, share it, learn from it or interpret it.

You can choose to see the light or the darkness, the good or the bad, the positive or the negative; but keep in mind that events, in and of themselves, are neither positive nor negative. What gives them their definition in your life is your response to them.

Every gift, regardless of its present interpretation, has future unknown outcomes. An apparent business failure can be viewed as a negative. However, if that failure led to a new and exciting career, one which you may never have discovered had your business not failed, then in hindsight the failure was a gift in disguise. If a divorce at first seems a negative life experience, but years later, after finding true peace and joy, either with another or in your own solitude, then in fact the divorce was a gift in disguise. We are not always privileged to know how events will turn out after the initial gift has been given. Our role in life is to take the gifts, say thank you, and move on with gratitude, positive anticipation, faith, and hope.