“If God shuts one door, he opens another.”

(Irish Proverb)

It probably sounds odd to talk about problems as gifts, but I have been thinking about how sometimes problems turn out to be blessings in disguise.  We all have problems –  illness, injuries, disappointments, loss.  Some of our problems are merely worrisome while others are absolutely devastating.

I know that devastating problems may not have a blessing attached to them, but the sad, hard, worrisome problems may very well come with the gift of a blessing. I have tried to think of times in my life when problems came with a gift. I remembered when my second daughter was born.  As soon as we came home from the hospital my husband flew across country to get a new job.  Five weeks later, the day after Christmas, we threw the tree out on the curb and left to drive across country. It was especially traumatic because we would be leaving my parents and I would be leaving home for the first time.

When we got there, we moved into a townhouse in a development under construction. We had no neighbors. The builder had cut the phone line three times so we had no phone service and wouldn’t for weeks. Two days after we arrived my husband left to fly across country. He was gone for two weeks at a time.  This was before cell phones so I was completely isolated with a four-year-old and a newborn.  I remember one snowy morning when I bundled both of them into the car and drove to a phone booth to call a doctor.  I waited 45 minutes in the cold phone booth for a return call which never came because the number on the pay phone didn’t actually belong to that pay phone. Thank God nothing bad happened to us when we there alone.  If it had, there was no way my four-year-old could have gotten help.

From all this, though, a blessing came. After several months, we moved to another state where we had neighbors. It was still hard, though, because of my husband’s traveling.

Eventually he took a

different job which brought us only 3 1/2 hours from my parents. While he was at this new job, I received a gift. We went to a business dinner and the secretary’s husband, who was a professional photographer, showed me what he was doing.  I had never seen a zoom lens and I was astonished that he could take pictures by candlelight.  He went on to be my first teacher.   He was a kind, gentle man and a wonderful teacher. If we hadn’t gone through the horrible moves, we would never have ended up here.  I would never have met him and been given the incredible gift of photography.

Blessings in disguise are a sacred gift.

May your blessings be many, your worries few. I wish you countless sacred gifts.