Update – I should have been counting earlier … but this is my 200th post. How grim!

I know I’ve missed “List Tuesday” … but so what. I know I’m supposed to “count my blessings.” But this has been a bad week and isn’t promising to get much better. So I’m not counting blessings today. I’m not sure what I’m counting here. I’m counting the things that are bugging me I guess. So … here they are and not in any particular order.

1. The day that that I celebrate and remember my son’s birth, I also have to remember and mourn Iraqi and American death (Sunday, this year).

2. That pain and suffering is not doled out in equal doses. Some people get far more than their share. And even when you think they’ve had enough and have turned a corner … they get more.

3. That despite the fact that we’re trying, we’re really trying, to unleash God’s Kingdom … it still seems far away and will never come.

4. That a man like Tom Fox with sincere heart gets butchered and a man like George Bush who’s heart seems anything but sincere gets to sleep peacefully in a well protected bed every night. I know it’s not for me to judge and that judgement will come from God, but it makes me angry.

5. Read Christy’s blog (Dry Bones Dance) for more injustice in L.A. Some Latino farmers have been working public land in a community garden for over 10 years. Now some guy wants (in his right of first refusal) to buy the land back. The farmers have managed to scrape together $9M which will give the guy a $4M profit. But no … this is not enough. He wants $18M. Greed … it makes me angry.

6. That 9 years and one month ago my cousin and his wife lost their little boy to something mysterious. One day he was alive and had a stomach virus. A few days later he was dead. His liver had failed and (from the autopsy report) it looked as tho he had overdosed on acetominophen … which they didn’t have in the house. And since it was one month before my son was born, our relationship has not ever been able to be quite the same. It sucks and I understand, but this was a cousin/brother. And I miss him.

7. That grandparents are really special; they are a reflection of how completely and fully God loves us. But we don’t realize this til they’re gone. Well … my grandparents were anyway. Even my Grandpa Naylor who used to say to me, “Eat thy dinner and let thy food stop thy mouth.” But he also used to take me out to do the daily shopping with him and we’d end up chasing fire trucks. We also watched “Ironsides” together, so I blame him for my “Law & Order” addiction.

8. That a country which appears to be so concerned with spreading “democracy” could also still practice the “art” of jerrymandering. That the person who spread it is not in prison, but is still holding office and continues to be held in high esteem. We fool ourselves when we think that we are a democracy of any sort at all when we allow this practice within our borders.

9. That a country so concerned with “democracy” but refuses to come up with an electronic voting system that doesn’t also include a paper trail that will establish the veracity of the votes is no democracy.

10. That despite all this suffering and death, I must still look up and out and see that God is and will always be, good. And tho the road is dark, in times past He has led me. So, today … I believe.