I love Thanksgiving. I am thankful for it. I don’t think I could like the month of November without it. By now, autumn has stopped being refreshing and is starting to behave a bit wintery. Holiday decorations are up in stores and I look like a fool walking through aisles with one hand on the shopping cart and the other putting a finger in one ear while my head is tilted askew enough to press my other ear into my shoulder while humming whatever was the last song to be stuck in my head in order to drown out the premature Christmas music blaring over the store’s sound system. I’m sorry but I get frustrated when I hear Christmas music too early and tend to communicate in run-on sentences. I will even stretch the truth to paint an amusing mental picture. No I have never really made a scene at a store doing that. But sometimes it helps to write out what I feel like doing so I don’t actually act on it. I’m think it’s okay for the music to start after Thanksgiving.
I have enjoyed reading friend’s Facebook status reports about what they are thankful for this month. In a way it’s like a writing assignment that most students get this time of year. Teachers have no problem having students compose something listing what they are thankful for. I don’t think that there is a secular humanist fringe objecting to that yet. But who knows. I am thankful we homeschool.
But more than just busywork or an easy assignment, I hope that students this year are able to examine their lives and count a few blessings. That’s what I think the best part of this Facebook project was. Sure, I like reading how people’s prayers are answered or they are thankful for their friends and family. But listing the things you are thankful for is not for anyone else as much as it is for the person composing the list. I think it’s a healthy thing to take an inventory of your blessings.
I rested the urge to blog this week about what I am thankful for. I like to say that I write for myself, but I really am thankful that people read this and don’t’ want to bore them with an outburst extolling how thankful I am for everything found on my table on Thanksgiving Day. I would go on to coffee and the cup I drink from most mornings, my shabby pickup truck with the stick shift and my ability to operate it. I could never fail to mention every person I come into contact with each day. Most of them have a kind word or smile for me. I have just about the best job and home and church I could hope for and of course my family. In my younger years I never prayed for a wife or family. I never really specified to God what I wanted in a spouse or children so God made the perfect selection for me.
And sometimes I feel a little guilty when I hear other’s prayer requests and I hear how not everyone has a job or a nice home or family. I look at my life and wonder what I did to deserve such a bounty of blessings. And I don’t have a good answer for this. I can only say that I am also thankful that I have God in my life and the knowledge that I am saved. And I am thankful that this is something that everyone can have.
It seemed that I went ahead and listed a few things here that I am very thankful for. I want to include whomever you are reading this. Every week I know some friends read this but so do some strangers. I wish I could thank everyone in person. Maybe someday I’ll see you on the other side. Until then I hope that whatever country you live in you are able to count your blessings once in a while and share at least a few of the things that I am thankful for. It would be my prayer that you share the most important thing. Nothing matters without that.
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