Sometimes being grateful isn’t a matter of being thankful for what you have or what you’ve experienced, but rather being grateful for what you don’t have or what hasn’t happened to you.
So though I’m endlessly grateful for my cute husband, who rolls our laundry into neat piles after seeing a Marie Kondo wannabe explain how to declutter your house; and my cats; and my chocolate; and my flowering begonias; I am also grateful that I have never had a serious illness, been sexually molested as a child or been burnt or stabbed and I have never been victimized in a Ponzi scheme.
I’ve been thinking this way because up to May of this year, I had never met the Devil, a Judas, a person so completely charming but duplicitous, that you wouldn’t realize while talking to him, you were being decapitated. A person who markets in betrayal all the while masquerading as a good and honorable person, someone who is so evil, such completely untruthful — I would say his acting skills are wickedly good if not for the pathetic pun.
The New Testament, 2 Corinthians 11:14, says that “Satan disguises himself as the angel of light” which is what this person did. Capitalizing on my love of light in order to deceive me.
But in May, he revealed himself. If you ever watched the tv show Lucifer, it was kind of like that, his beautiful skin rolling back to reveal the terrifying vileness and filth underneath.
I doubt I will be the same after this. I will never trust people in the same way I did—and no one thought of me as a big Pollyanna in the first place! But although I am angry and shocked, I have to admit I am grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to live my life up to now, without having met such an immoral human being, someone so foul. And I will survive this betrayal because as we all know- living well is the best revenge.
On December 30, 2016, still devastated over the election of Drumpf, I dug down deep inside myself to find something to be grateful for. I found gratitude for my life that, whatever its ups and downs, had been well-lived prior to the country’s debasement. I understood that I was lucky. That couldn’t be said for the people who were coming of age at that moment, as I foresaw a country that would be torn apart by hideous policies, ineptitude, pandemics, racism, corruption, political polarization and the utter destruction of not only our legal mores, but the very Constitution itself.
Now in June of 2020, I have to acknowledge the same thing—I give thanks that, up to now, my life had been without this kind of pain, drama and betrayal—and I know that one day it will be free of it again.
And so it will be for all of us in this country. Y’hi ratzon.
