It's all about counting your blessings

Have you ever felt anguish so raw that there is a persistent lump in your throat?  You feel misery wash over you drop by drop. Sadness fills your every emotion, almost strangling every happy memory.
You are desperate to chase away the feeling. Try to sleep but can't get even a wink. Those you thought were closest to you, no where to sooth you.  Your head and heart feel like they are in a competition for who is heavier. Nausea just around the corner and you have to take a deep breath every so often.Your tears keep close, ready to honor your heart's command to appear.
Well if you have ever felt anything close to that, then you know it's hard to count your blessings at that point in time. I just read an article on sex trafficking of young girls in Mexico. I guess the kind of anguish I have described is what they go through after being kidnapped by drug gangs. Can you imagine a 10 year old girl being prostituted? Taken from her family, never to be seen again ?
I read this article and my heart ached and sank for them. I asked myself how can their president sleep at night knowing that such heinous acts happen. I wondered why the leader of the free world has not intervened. But then again if State of Affairs or Commander in Chief portray the white house, then maybe too much red tape is involved.
I am saying a prayer for those girls no different from the ones kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Bring back our girls! !
Can you believe that in Mexico the penalty for stealing a cow is higher than that of stealing a girl?The crude, inhumane gangs steal these girls based on the fact that a bag of heroine can only be peddled once but the girls three or more times a day.
Sexual abuse of these under age girls is no big deal. The police are either indifferent or corrupt and do nothing to help their case. As it is the girls are hidden from plain sight and warned not to wear any make up. Some are even dressed like boys!
Here I am thinking, my biggest woes as a Kenyan undergraduate female student are so minute. I hope to secure a job in a management trainee program. I aspire to pass my college course work and generally to be happy in life.
I can only count my blessings that in my beautiful motherland, I am free. Free to roam the streets, free to enjoy the sunny outdoors, free to wear make up when I want to and free to be me. I have never really appreciated being a girl living in Kenya.
The plight of those Mexican girls really put things into perspective. How lucky I truly am that a night in jail is my biggest fear? In Mexico, women/girls would rather stay in prison. In fact they would willingly stab the wardens just to make sure they stay locked up. Why? You may ask. Prison apparently is where they feel safest and cared for. It is only behind bars and prison doors they get to enjoy mundane things like hair spray and perfume.
At times I have envied my well to do peers with their flashy phones and clothing. But that will surely come to an end, especially when I think about those girls. Girls who live in fear down in their rural villages, girls who might be better writers than me but never get the chance. Girls who have accelerated heart beats especially when they think of a man. Girls who don't even understand the meaning of the word career woman.
As I sit here and write, I thank God that I was born in Kenya. So here I am saying thank you God for all my blessings. Sorry for those vane moments I take them for granted. Never will I whine endlessly that my little red visitors always come with painful cramps. Or that they did so on short notice, say maybe the morning of my big interview. Oh no, that won't be me. I wanna turn a new leaf, a gratitude leaf.
I might not have many new year resolutions this year but for sure this will be top of the list.
Count your blessings, name them one by one.
Count your blessings... and it will surprise you what the Lord has done!🎶🎶