spent

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Sometimes when I shuffle the cards for the Monthly Word, I hear messages. This time I heard: “Count your blessings, not your money.” Welp.

One thing I’ve learned about blessings AND money, is that they both come from the same source: relationships. All forms of currency, whether earned (money) or unearned (blessings), exist only in transference from one person, or conduit, to another. 

Money is kind of predictable. In most cases, you know how you got it, you know exactly what you can & can’t do with it, & (ideally) you know how or when you can get some more. 

Blessings on the other hand are unpredictable. You don’t know how you got them, & you aren’t positive what you can or will do with them, & you have no idea how or when you can get some more.

Money is a timing thing, hence the phrase, “time is money.” Money is currency, which is nearly identical to the word “currently.” The word “currently,” is a couple letters longer than the word, “current,” which defines what is NOW (currently) happening, but also defines the movement of water, i.e. the ebb & flow of the tides. The tide comes & goes just like money. Therefore, as long as the sun continues to rise & fall, and as long as the moon orbits the earth, then the tides, & the current ( i.e.  the ebb & flow of currency) is guaranteed. You don’t have to watch the waves to know that as surely as they go out, they will be back. The tide is time, is clockwork. What goes around, comes around, what is spent will be replaced, forever & ever Amen. 

However blessings are not a cycle (like money), blessings are a storm. You don’t see blessings coming & just as quickly they are gone. They are sudden, powerful, whimsical, illogical. A blessing demands to be watched, thunders for your attention, screams for a moment of your eternal awe & then disappears into placidity as if it never was, like childhood. Like children.

This month, the Most High asks us why we spend so much time watching our money instead of our blessings, when one is statistics & the other is fireworks. 

The Most High wonders why we are like busy parents herding our kids through a crowd, distractedly counting the same dollars in our wallet, while paying no attention to the fact that the loved ones we came with are disappearing into the fray one by one. The Most High wonders how we would feel if we arrived home with a wallet full of dollar bills and our babies grown & gone.

This month, perspective is needed. We are called to ponder the cost of the priceless, & ask ourselves why we are fixated on coins when we already have SO MANY THINGS no amount of money could buy.

The assumption that blessings are unpredictable is only half true, by the way. It is true that the timing & circumstances of their arrival is uncertain, but the length of their stay is exact & inextricably tied to our level of attention to & appreciation of their presence. When blessings (like children) don’t feel seen, loved & appreciated, they tend to wander off when nobody’s watching. The Most High doesn’t send storms of goodness for them to sit around & be ignored.

Therefore, we are encouraged to stop counting our eggs when we need to be feeding our chickens.

And on the flip side, if we are the chicken & folks full from our yolk keep counting our eggs without giving a cluck, we are encouraged to shut it down & starve ‘em out. 

This month, what is not loved will surely be lost, & what is not appreciated will be dried up & given away. 

Luckily it’s free to pay attention. (It’s a blessing, actually.) ​