I wanted to sit down and pen a thank you letter to you. It is only because of you that I am the woman that I am today. There are really so many facets that I just don’t rightfully know where to begin but I’ll start by saying thank you for the long line of failures, mistakes, hurt, rejection, pain, depression, and struggle. Each of which has increased my wisdom and challenged me to continue to grow emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.
I want to personally take the time to thank the men who have undervalued me and not fully appreciated the love that I have had to offer. It is because of you that I have learned to seek out my first love and desire a deeper connection with Him. Living with the loneliness that accompanies rejection, has taught me to appreciate the time that I have spent getting to know myself. When you learn to live with and embrace the time you spend alone, you won’t be so apt to accept anything for the sake of having something. This time alone has allowed me to differentiate between taking on unhealthy relationships for the sake of filling a void and allowing myself to invest in someone who has the real potential to add value to my life. Ultimately, rejection and loneliness has taught me the significance of the wait and developed in me the importance of honoring the man that God has fashioned for me when He comes. With that being said I want to pause to say thank you to loss…deep unimaginable loss. We are taught that we don’t have to be thankful FOR all things but IN ALL THINGS give thanks. I am grateful even in loss that I have learned to appreciate the people who are yet in my life. If I had never experienced the depth of loss that I have encountered, I might not have developed such a deep and passionate love for the people who are left. Many times I don’t know how to scale back my feelings because I give people all that I have and I am learning to no longer feel bad about that. Although it has opened me up to some very vulnerable situations, in the end it has created a more loving, compassionate heart in me and God certainly honors that. I would be remiss to write this letter and leave out rock bottom. Many people may not be able to relate to this portion because perhaps you have always had an abundance of everything that you wanted, but I can’t say that is my testimony. I thank God for the times that I felt like I was just scraping by. I am grateful for the nights that I laid in my bed and calculated on my two hands how to stretch out the little that I had to make the month. It was in those times that I learned to lean and depend completely on God. I watched Him many days do only what He could do and I am so thankful for the distance that He has brought me. In closing, I am grateful for the peace that I have found in my pain. It really doesn’t matter if your darkness is the same, worse, or less intense than mine. The truth is we all struggle. We all get hurt. We all make mistakes. And all these things deepen our capacity for amazing love, joy, passion, and fulfillment. Marshunda Thomas “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.” Joel 2:25
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The other day, I opened my drawer and sitting there I saw my two most prized possessions; a small brown glass bottle with a rusted white cap and a busted little red coin purse with a silver clasp. Tears started to fall down my face as the significance of those two items together began to fill my mind.
When the hospital called me to pick up my dad’s clothes, the only things he had in his pocket were his glasses and a small brown glass bottle. It is important to understand that since having his leg amputated, he had been staying at a rehab center and in his last days there were times when he didn’t even recognize me or my children. But there in his pocket were the items that he still remembered he couldn’t leave without…his glasses and his blessed oil. It was indicative of who he was because even as a child, some of my very first memories of my dad are those of him praying. I can still remember him kneeling beside my bed and reciting the Lord’s Prayer with me and him leading prayer with us every year that we were together on New Year’s Eve. When he came to live with me, I was telling him about someone asking me to pray for them. He looked at me and said “you know that’s the best compliment someone can give you. If they ask you to pray for them, that means that they trust that you can get a prayer through.” That’s why as he became increasingly ill and it became obvious to me that things were beginning to spiral, I turned to the only thing I knew…prayer. One day I got a call from the rehab center saying that they were once again transporting him to the hospital. I left my job to go check on him and when I walked into his room everything seemed so very different but eerily familiar at the same time. I hadn’t seen him like this before. I noticed just how small his frame had become. His face appeared to be sunken in and he barely responded to me when I called his name. Although it was my first time seeing him like that, the feeling that I got being in the room seemed similar to the feeling I had when I realized that my mother might not make it. When he had gone into surgery to have his leg amputated, I held his hand and we prayed the prayer of faith. Although I knew that we had a long road ahead of us, I believed that God could and would heal his body. But when I walked into that room on this day, the feeling was different. It wasn’t that I believed that God didn’t have the power to heal him, but it was the realization that at this point I would have to accept whatever He would allow. I looked down at him, gently placed my hand over his head, and began to pray. I didn’t pray a long drawn out selfish prayer. I simply asked God that He would find favor in His life and honor His faithfulness. It was in that moment that I received peace. It was an oddly familiar feeling. Grief is the most complex, unique emotion that you will ever experience. I always shy away from telling people “I know exactly how you feel” because the truth is while two people may experience the same kind of loss, no two people will ever deal with it the same. The loss of my father was especially hard for me because it was, in my mind, the end of an era. While he was alive, I still had a piece of the life that we lived so many years ago on Raymond Circle Drive but after he passed that seemed to go with him. The memories will always remain but he was the last tangible tie that I had to my childhood. But when I opened that drawer, I saw there my mother’s coin purse with everything exactly the way she left it 15 years ago right down to the change and now my dad’s oil existing together once again. The significance of that was overwhelming to me. It was beautiful in my mind because I watched my father at the end of his life search for a love like the one he shared for 24 years with my mother. Although sometimes I would give him a hard time about it, he explained to me that he longed for a companion who he could share the sunset years of his life with. My heart aches for the loneliness that I now understand that he felt. But I have peace knowing that both of my parents are now resting. Even if I never experience a relationship with the kind of unconditional love that they shared, I am blessed to be able to say that I have witnessed it before. I am so grateful to have grown up in a house where my parents grossed me out at times being affectionate towards each other and where I understood that family was always first. In a time when money was not always plentiful, the one thing that was never scarce was love. I saw my parents go without many days so that I could have the best of everything they could offer. They made sacrifices in their own lives that afforded me the opportunities that I have today and for that I am thankful. Most of all I am I am grateful for the legacy that they left behind for my children and I. |
AuthorMarshunda Thomas Archives
January 2020
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