News Flash

I usually don't like to watch the local news on TV because it's like a litany of bad news...violence...tragedy - I have a very active imagination, and things that I see or hear tend to stay with me, so I try to avoid negative or heart-rending stuff as much as possible. Still, I do like to have information about what's going on, so I get my news mostly from online news sites. That way, I get to pick and choose what I want in my head and my heart...sometimes though, it doesn't always work....like today.

Today, I bumped into a story about a little girl who was born without eyes...a congenital defect of some kind - she does not have ocular nerves, and her eye sockets were just empty, rendering her completely and irrevocably blind - I saw her picture, and it was heartbreaking. Having just had a baby myself, I began to wonder what it would have been like if my child could not look into my eyes and smile at me. That little girl has some devices inserted into her eye sockets so that her face can grow properly, and she will eventually get prosthetic eyes, but will never be able to see.

Just being born, that baby is facing challenges that I cannot even imagine. Even now, I think to myself, "Why do things like this happen...especially to the innocents?" There are so many questions....but some answers will never be known on this side of eternity, so I struggle to get the picture of that precious little girl out of my mind, but I can't. I started to think about how ungrateful I've been lately...how I focus more on what's going wrong than the things that are right...

Life is full of challenges, and I have my fair share of them. But today, I decided to choose gratitude over worry, over doubt, over uncertainties. God has blessed me, and I must make a conscious effort to have a thankful heart, above all.

I look at my daughter as she sleeps, content - and at this moment, so am I. For this moment, life is perfect, and I'm grateful that there is no tragedy in my life that's playing out on the 10 o'clock news, or as a headline on an online news item.

O. Odunze