Do you know how blessed you are? Like do you really know? Yall, this is going to be a thinking blog because I need some of you to take a moment and really give homage to being on the OTHER SIDE. Yaaassss, on the other side of a pandemic. You can say you made it. Like for real, do you know how many people didn’t make it???

Go ahead. Hit google with me and type the words “how many people died during Covid-19?” Go ahead. Open another tab and do the search. I’m not going to give the answer. I want you to see it with your own eyes. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Yep, that’s how many people died. Some conspiracy theorists say the pandemic was fake. Ok, cool. Run with that if you must. But at the end of the day, those people died and you are still here. You are still here with the ability to read this post. You are here with the activities of your limbs. Your brain is working and regulated. As you read, you are processing the information I’m giving you, coupling with the statistics you just read and you are forming an opinion. But the opinion I want to give adequate pause to is the fact that:

Through the devastation, through the storm, through the pain…you are BLESSED. Better than BLESSED.

You have so much to be thankful for sis! Sir, you are here and that’s a blessing! Someone prayed for you to be here and YOU ARE! And the goal of this blog is to get you to start to think about your own blessings. If you will only entertain me for about 5 more minutes, pretty please. Do it for me! Grab a piece of paper and something to write with. Real quick, grab something. It can be a scrap piece of paper, but grab it. You can even use the NOTES app on your phone. Go there now. And let’s list out all of the things you have been blessed with throughout this pandemic. Do NOT focus on any of your losses. We can all agree that we maybe loss something or someone, but the focus of this moment is to recall the things we gained.

I’ll start us off. I’m blessed because:

• My family was protected. I prayed yall and I prayed that Covid would NOT reach our doorsteps and if it did, I prayed it was me. I didn’t want my babies to get it. No parent wants to see their kids sick. And I didn’t want my husband to get it either because out of us both, he had several of the vulnerabilities that made him more susceptible to getting it and having major complications. And as a wife, I didn’t want my rib to suffer either. I felt my body was more capable of surviving. If it were to be anyone Lord, let it be me. Yet, it was my husband who got it first. His symptoms were mild after getting the monoclonal infusion and of course, he survived. Almost a year later, I got it (ummm and as you are reading, I too survived). And less than a month ago, my daughter had it. SURVIVED. #blessed

• For 2 whole years, I was a stay-at-home mom with a full time job! Where they do that at (autocorrect, you can take those squiggly lines from under my words because I said that exactly the way I wanted it to be said…where they do that at!)??? HERE, in this life, that’s where. For over a year (before my kids returned to school in-person), I had them at home. Yes, kids can be a bit much but I got to know my kids in their elements. I got to hear them interact with their teachers and classmates. I got to hear their voices more, their ideas, to touch their skin more through hugs, to learn the color of their eyes more as they talked and talked (and my daughter talked some more), gained glimpses of their true personalities, their eating habits, their skips and jumps, their free throws and back bends, witnessed them making a new best friend and family member out of our covid dog, and the list goes on and on. Prior to the pandemic, these interactions with my kids would’ve been few and far in-between; however, through the hand we were dealt, I got to experience real life with my kids while having a career. The best of both worlds. #blessed

• My faith grew stronger. I was always one who was addicted to hearing His Word through YouTube videos of sermons and clips. But this only exacerbated when one needed something to grasp a hold of to make sense of it all. I never questioned God, at least not too much. But in my heart, I knew something greater just had to be on the other side of this thing. It just had to be. Right. So my pool of YouTube televangelists grew larger. It went from Pastors T.D. Jakes and Steven Furtick to Pastors Mike Todd, Dharius Daniels, Tim Ross, Lisa Harper, Charles Metcalf, Sarah Jakes-Roberts, etc. They all expanded my views and love for Christ and love for His people. I gave grace more freely. And I began to correctly judge. Let’s get this out of the way…the Bible doesn’t call us to NOT judge but to be a ‘good’ judge. There is a such thing as a good judge, yep. (Looks like yall got homework to do on that one). I would hear from Him before but through this pandemic, His voice has become LOUDER and LOUDER. Thank You Jesus. #blessed

I’ll make these next blessings brief for blog word-count sake. I am/have:

• More emotional control
• Higher level of self-awareness
• Slower to anger
• Able to get more done at work and around the house (feeling more accomplished)
• Finally moved into our new house
• Met more friends in the apartment (i.e. dog lovers)
• Stronger body (ran a half marathon and now training for a full marathon – my computer must be hacked)
• Got control (still getting control) of my eating habits
• So did my husband, he got fine fine on me (licks my lips…oh I’m sorry back to the list)
• Kids smarter, brighter, healthier, oh how I love them
• My son’s faith walk is mind-blowing
• My daughter is everything I’m not, her personality is unmatched
• Both kids are so athletically talented (they didn’t get this from me)
• The relationship between my mom and I have been restored (look at God)
• My sister moved close-by. Love having her near. Our bond is tighter.
• Undenyable peace

Just like you, I can go on and on. Listen. It’s so easy to get wrapped up and tangled in the negative and all the things that have gone wrong in our lives. It’s ok to acknowledge those blows of life, but don’t stop there. Take time to also acknowledge those blessings. They are just as real and if we are honest, they are more numerous in total than those trials and tribulations. This pandemic was a hard hit in our guts, but through the devastation…we are still blessed.

Stay blessed and remember you are your own competition.

Competition of 1