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Blogs by Joel Arnold
Blessings - or - What I write after having one too many...
8/3/2011 5:39:20 PM
Blessings; sometimes they come at you disguised as failure and pain.
Sometimes it’s the late night mugging that causes you to miss the taxi that crashes into a building.
Sometimes it’s the bounced check that keeps you from buying that fifth of Beam that could’ve pushed you over the edge.
Sometimes it’s the heart attack that lets the doctor find the malignancy before it metastasizes.
Sometimes it’s getting fired from your job, saving you from years of tediousness and ulcers.
Sometimes it’s the DUI that kept you from killing a family of five or causing the VFW to put up a white cross on the side of the road to mark your passing.
Sometimes it’s the dad who abandons you at a young age so that a loving step-dad can take his place.
Sometimes it’s the teenage abortion that lets you get your shit together and raise a healthy family full of love.
Sometimes it’s the loss of a beloved pet that teaches you about the sanctity of life or prepares you for the death of someone close to you.
A forest fire clears the way for new growth; the ashes create a fertile, potent soil.
If you believe in God, then perhaps God allows tragedy to happen so that we may remember how to live. If you don’t believe in God, tragedies still happen, and perhaps it’s still best to remember how to live.
Sometimes tragedy is what makes us feel again, wakes us up from a coma of complacency, jars us into remembering how to live again.
There are blessings in every tragedy, blessings in every death, every accident, every disappointment – if only to be found in the gained wisdom of the survivors. Yes, of course, take time to grieve tragedy, but eventually allow yourself to open to the resultant blessing. The whole story of human kind is written by blessing after blessing wrought from tragedy after tragedy.
Please don’t think I like tragedy, nor do I wish it upon anyone else. I’m certainly not advocating for the creation of it. There’s enough tragedy in the world to go around without our help. But…tragedy is a fact of life – it will always be here – and instead of falling to my knees and suffocating in its ashes, I’d rather spend my energy gathering those blessings that bloom from it.
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More Blogs by Joel Arnold
• The Sucking Suckathon of Suckiness - Monday, May 21, 2012
• Mississippi Pearls and a Car Biding Its Time on the Ice 'til Spring - Thursday, December 29, 2011
• One Decade, One Story - or how One Thing Leads to Another - Wednesday, December 28, 2011
• Racing Minnesota-style! - Wednesday, December 28, 2011
• This Here Minnesota Horror Author was a Big Old Scaredy-Cat - Thursday, December 22, 2011
• Jack the Blob Killer - Monday, December 19, 2011
• Death Rhythm - Tuesday, September 20, 2011
• More Writing What You Know - Monday, September 19, 2011
• How I Interpret 'Write What You Know' - Wednesday, August 03, 2011
• Blessings - or - What I write after having one too many... - Wednesday, August 03, 2011
• 120 Miles in a Canoe - Monday, June 27, 2011
• On Stephen King - Thursday, June 23, 2011
• Why Horror? - Wednesday, June 22, 2011
• Zen & the Art of Swearing - Friday, June 10, 2011
• If Coffee Shops were Run by Airlines - Thursday, May 12, 2011
• Trying to Figure Out What Scares Me - Monday, March 21, 2011
• My Confession - Tuesday, March 08, 2011
• Going Indie with my novel Northwoods Deep - Friday, March 04, 2011
• How I Envision Conflict When Writing - Thursday, March 03, 2011
• Wall Drug - why it's one of my favorite places - Wednesday, February 02, 2011
• Jonesing for a Road Trip - Wednesday, February 02, 2011
• Snowmapocalyptopalooza - Tuesday, February 01, 2011
• How Do You Remember? - Thursday, January 20, 2011
• When your parents are librarians... - Tuesday, January 18, 2011
• The genesis of a novel - the first 6 days - Tuesday, January 04, 2011
• Searching for Truth - Characterization - Thursday, December 16, 2010
• Control - and a little more about Northwoods Deep - Monday, December 13, 2010
• Bukowski - Wednesday, December 08, 2010
• Flies, Flies, Spam, and Flies - Friday, December 03, 2010
• Naivete and the Young Writer - Thursday, December 02, 2010
• For Writers looking for some Adventure - Wednesday, December 01, 2010
• My usual rider for family/friend appearances - Tuesday, November 23, 2010
• Writing and Me - a dramatization - Wednesday, November 17, 2010
• Writing Tip o' the Day (now with vitamin C!) - Tuesday, November 16, 2010
• The Power of Music - Tuesday, November 16, 2010
• To All the Bookstores I've Loved Before - Monday, November 15, 2010
• The Care and Feeding of Writers - Sunday, November 14, 2010
• Rudiments - Thursday, November 11, 2010
• Writing Tip o' the Day - Wednesday, November 10, 2010
• Tragedy - now with 50% more pathos! - Tuesday, November 09, 2010
• Perspective - Monday, November 08, 2010
• The Daunting Dauntiness of Tweeting on Twitter - Saturday, November 06, 2010
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