I am thankful for our drafty old house, that shelters us from the cold and heat and wind and rain, that is a sanctuary amidst a clamoring world.  I am thankful that God should take an interest in my family and me, hearing our prayers as well as our gripes, and continuing to stem the free-flow of evil-that-would-be, if He were to allow it.  I am thankful that we live in a nation that is still the best nation to live in, despite its accelerating decline.  I am grateful that God gave me parents who understood the importance of knowing about Him and His Bible, and the Church.  I am thankful for being delivered from years of black and deep depression and for the medical care that led to the diagnosis of my sleep disorders and the measures and medications that have been availed to me so that I can now do more than drag myself out of bed and think of  more than getting back into it as soon as possible.   I am more thankful than words can express, that my husband went to Patient First nearly a year ago and Dr. Raman was wise enough to do basic blood work in the face of my husband’s complaint of fatigue and breathlessness, found the indications that he was bleeding, and sent him to the emergency room which led to the discovery of the cancer.  I am thankful he had the chemo and is still with us, his family.  I am thankful that he had a short-term disability policy that kept our family from complete financial ruin.  I am thankful that even though life is not easy, it is manageable when we draw our strength from the Lord.  I am so glad that I have a couple of friends and family members who know me well and who understand, accept and love me.

I am thankful for the precious privilege and honor of being a mom, and for the two boys God chose to place in our care, and for all the things we learn from one another.  I am thankful that I had good parents who stayed together and lived an example of humility and unselfishness, and giving, and doing the right things as a matter of course and not begrudgingly.

I am also thankful that they never pretended to be anything other than what they were, and who God made them.  There was a simplicity in the home and in life, when I was growing up, that is pretty well extinct these days.  Maybe it was somewhat a product of the times we have lived in, but also of the people we came from;  mountain folk, “backward”.  In this “forward-thinking” society, now we’ve arrived where we are, I am grateful for the laggers which slowed us down, as a society, and wish more of them were still around.

I am thankful for the way God made me, personally, the things He have me vision to see and a heart to appreciate.  I am thankful for the capacity of joy that I have had, even though it means an equally abundant capacity for heartache, for there can’t be one without the equal and opposing “other”.

I am thankful for sleep!  Rain! Sunshine, seasons, and the occasional day so mesmerizing in the beauty of it that it stops me in my tracks and I just have to close my eyes and breathe it in and thank God.  I thank God for the brilliance of fall colors, and my ability to see them.  I am thankful for the fragrances of spring and salty ocean air, and pungent spices in a hearty meal.

I am thankful for compassion and love and forgiveness and kind hearts encountered when least expected,  for the blessing of hearing a baby laugh, for my own  fingers and my hands and my toes and my feet.  They aren’t pretty but they get the job done!  I am thankful for the ability to move and think, and hear and taste and express things.

I am thankful for my salvation above all else.  The plans God has for me, that extend far beyond this Earthly existence. I am thankful I can look forward to seeing my grandma and my dad again, but most of all, that I will see Jesus.