Epiphany during Lent?

I am excited. A 9 year old South African girl I never met may have taught me what I need to get out of this rut of feeling 'wronged'. I was watching Oprah - the special about the leadership academy for girls that she started in South Africa. Part of the show was a series of profiles of a few of the girls who had been selected to attend. One was a sweet child of about 9 whose parents were dead who was being raised by her grandmother in horrible poverty. Her father had shot her mother and then himself. Yet she slept with a picture of them both above her bed, and with her sister would go to the grave to pray for them lovingly, even her father. At one point in the show she was talking about her past and said that although her past was hard, and that her life was not easy that it was the life that God had given her, and it was hers to do the best with it that she could. To be thankful for what she did have.

Something in me snapped open. I felt light starting to pour in.

Finally an image that did take seriously the wrong that had happened, but an image that found a bridge over it.

Life changing bad things have happened to me. Some people have deliberately harmed me.

So what?

That doesn't make this day any less of a gift from God.

I have been dealt a rough hand of cards to play at many points in my life.

So what?

Join the planet Earth. Look around, plenty have it harder than I do. And every minute I spend focussed on what had been done wrongly to me is a minute of joy I give up. too. A minute of gratitude I give up, too.

Every minute I give up to resentments makes what I have to feel bad about that much bigger. At that point the only abuser is me.

I thank those of you who have read this and offered prayer.

Today is the day the Lord has made. I am rejoicing.