2005 11 Thankful2005

Thankful 2005

This year I asked the boys to think of five things for which they are grateful. And in keeping with a sense of fairness, I needed to define my list as well. So here goes.

I am thankful for my family. I have friends who missed the opportunity to have a family, and while I have failed to create the nurturing and guidance I wanted for the boys, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to love them. 

I am thankful for my sister. Only she and God know most of my aches and disappointments and dreams and frustrations and accomplishments. Without her non-judgmental understanding, I would hide many truths from her. Without her ear, I would be less.  

I am grateful for the job I have now, for the security and dependability, for flexibility and good souls, for the dear friend who is fourteen cubicles away. I am lucky to be here.

I am grateful for the skills I’ve acquired, perhaps mostly through adversity, but acquired just the same. I am lucky to have confidence in those skills and understand those talents and know that I will always rebound, will always bounce back, and will always find someplace to add value.

I am grateful for my mother. For years, I joked that I come from a long line of women who worked too hard but had an incredible capacity for love. I am so grateful for those lessons that hard work wouldn’t kill me; that I am capable of more and will survive more than I think; and that happiness comes from loving, not from being loved. With that insight, how can I lose?

And having been the over-achiever, with further to go than most, and with obsessive-compulsive running deep in my genes, I had six things on my list. I am grateful for my faith. The grace God granted me to believe, the vision to see the world differently, the relationship with Him that sustains me. I know what gift was waiting behind every painful thing in my life but one. How lucky is that? And so I know, always, that if I’m willing to “bloom where I’m planted” and surrender to the adventure ahead, I will come away stronger, wiser, better able to help another, or fulfilled in the dreams I hold in my heart. Regardless of what the gift is, I know in my heart it will be.