Choosing to be Thankful

In the midst of this pain, I have been faced with some conflicting realities. The primary source of the conflict is the reality that God is Sovereign and He is Good. That doesn’t not naturally reconcile to the reality I have known for the past six weeks. The challenge is to find a way to fit all this together with the character of God – that is the absolute truth, the rest is just circumstance. . .

In the midst of this, I have determined that it is a choice to be thankful and, in spite of the pain, there is much for which to be thankful:

  • I am so thankful that Christopher was not driving the night of the accident. Given his driving history, had he been driving, I am certain to have been angry with him and struggled with guilt that I had continued to allow him to drive.
  • I am so thankful that I was able to see Christopher alive after the accident. He was not conscious, but was very peaceful. Given the magnitude of the accident, I am certain to have imagined much more “ugly” injuries. We had such hope at that point; the scan didn’t reveal any damage to his brain and he was moving his arms and legs.
  • If this was God’s appointed time to call Christopher home, I am so thankful that Christopher never regained consciousness. I would not have wanted him to be scared.
  • I am so thankful that God spared Christopher from living a painful life. I think that if Christopher had been debilitated as a result of the accident, he would have really struggled; I believe he would have been a very angry young man.
  • I hadn’t done any Christmas shopping. That was really unusual for me, but I am so thankful that I didn’t have to deal with returns, given the circumstances.
  • I am so thankful for an arguement that Christopher and I had just two weeks earlier. There are two things that I said during this “discussion” that I need to cling to now. It is a gift to have verbalized these things before his death so that I know that I believed them and am not just trying to convince myself now that these things are true. The first one is the reality that it is not hypocritical to choose to focus on the positive rather than on the negative. Secondly, is that I had the chance to tell him that I knew that, although I wasn’t perfect, that I could honestly say that nobody tried harder to be a good parent; I had no regrets.