lucky

some people call it blessed. i always feel this awkward pause welling up in my throat (brain? vocal chords?) before i use any adjective meaning 'fortunate.' take a minute, assess my surroundings: am i around christians? non-christians? if i say 'blessed' right now, how does it sound? completely trite? is there any way to say 'blessed' that sounds genuine? on the other hand, if i say that i'm 'lucky,' do you think that i am taking God out of the equation?

when i'm around people who throw 'blessed' around like they were name dropping at the vanity fair oscar party, i will never use that word. you were not blessed to find that parking spot, i think. you got lucky. five seconds earlier and you would have walked your sorry ass three blocks to the grocery store, and your bags would have broken from the weight of your 2 percent milk. it wasn't a blessing that you got a hotel room at the last minute in venice, even if you did pray with your whole family about it. you got lucky and your timing was right. because it seems to me that if you didn't get that parking spot, or if you hadn't have gotten that room, you wouldn't have been blessed. God wouldn't have been looking out for you. and i just don't think that's the case. some people talk about blessing like it's a wink that God gives them across the room, over the heads of everyone else who hasn't prayed hard enough or worked at it diligently enough.

but the parking spot, the hotel room . . . i can't believe, either, that God doesn't teach us in these mundane ways, or that he isn't orchestrating some crazy shit up in heaven so that when i am at the end of my rope, i get that parking spot and remember his goodness even in the smallest of details. so am i lucky? or blessed?