blessed
I was at my first of four weddings that I’ll be officiating this past weekend. It was in Tahoe and ahhh… I forgot how beautiful Lake Tahoe really is. I got to meet a lot of Gail and Hubert’s family and got to know hear some good stories.
I was talking with one of Gail’s cousins – a really interesting guy who works for a school-photography company [taking those semi-cheese stock school photos - the one we all had when we were in elementary school]. On first appearance he looked like one of those “I’m-passionate-about-art-and-design-but-I’m-always-misunderstood-so-I’ll-keep-a-harder-exterior-and-a-safe-distance-from-you” – I guess I judge people just like everyone else.
But it was easy to strike up a conversation and connection with him – of which couldn’t be said about most people these days. We talked about random things, including careers, photography, family, etc. And then I noticed that he had a tattoo on his wrist – so I asked him what that tattoo was. It looked like a bracelet tattooed around his wrist with the following word inscribed on the inside of the wrist:
It is pronounced “ASHER” which means “BLESSED” in Hebrew… I didn’t want to flex my amazing Hebrew on him [of which there wasn't much anyways]… frankly all I could do was pronouce it. Weak.
He shared that as he was growing up he was really hard on himself. He would hear people’s criticism and he’d take it really hard and be in depressive funks for weeks on end. A few years ago he went to the Philippines to visit family and came across a group of people who had far less than he had and yet weren’t suffering the same type of emotional funks. They were blessed… and it reminded him that he was blessed as well. And as he began to remember that God had indeed blessed him [I assume with the life, the skills, the job he has, etc.]… the depressive funks began to go away. He said he suffers very few of those funks these days.
He finished off his explanation with this – that at the end of the day [his words not mine, haha], God’s opinion of him was the only one that mattered. It was so encouraging… to hear someone understand in it’s simplest form, the essential message of Jesus. I don’t think he went to church or was particularly “religious” – whatever that means. But he understood… and because of this, he had a very genuine “sunny-disposition”… it wasn’t fake like many of us “professional” Christians. He was very thoughtful and you can tell he’s a thinker – but he didn’t look weighed down and had no problem sharing his story with some punk like me.
He knew he was blessed – but after our convo, I was the one who’s blessed.
