Thankful

Over the past ten years we have had the great privilege of being a part of another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, a family that has become very much like family to us as well as to the others who have attended.  In the last ten years we have only missed two Thanksgivings with this family, one of those was today.  In missing, however, we were privileged to join another family's Thanksgiving day tradition, another family who very much like the first, is like family to us.

Traditions run differently between different households, but one thing is very much the same, this is a day to give thanks by setting aside everything else and just focusing on what is good.  Of course, every Thanksgiving I have thoughts of wouldn't it be better to live every day like this, but today truly is a uniquely special day.  

So right now, in the spirit of thankfulness, I would like to share some things that I am thankful for.

I am thankful for my wife of almost 19 years.  We merged our life paths together very young, and at just the right time.  From that day on, our journey has been one adventure after another; God leading us, and sometimes even catching us as we have stumbled at times from the path that He has so wonderfully set before us.  We have learned to lean on each other through thick and through thin, and there has been plenty of both.  She is my partner, my love, and every bit my friend.  She is a blessing from God.

I am thankful for my two daughters.  We thought there would be many more, but God knew to grace us with these two wonderfully gifted and talented and beautiful young ladies.  They are a joy and a delight (when they aren't fighting!) and I love that I get to be a father to them.  I have much hope for them as they are continuing ever more independently on their own journeys of discovering who their Heavenly Father is and what this life of His is really all about.

I am thankful that I have had another year with my mother.  I am grateful that God has used this time to heal even more wounds and give us the relationship that I have always craved, but didn't always know how to give in return.

I am thankful for a father who dared to show me what it was to be a true man.  I am grateful that he did not give up on us and chose instead to become the man that I love and respect so much today.  

I am thankful for a loving little sister who has chosen to look past the mental and even some physical scars that a mean big brother can inflict.  I love the relationship I have with my lil-sis and niece.

I am thankful for a mother-in-law who is also my mother.  God has specially gifted and equipped her through so much adversity and pain.  She is amazing proof of what God can do with one who chooses Him above everything else in life.

I am thankful for my friends, friends who are more than acquaintances, friends who are like brothers and sisters to me.  You have stood with us, you have stood behind us in support, and you have gone ahead of us to lead when we were weak.  Each of you are blessings beyond words.

I am thankful for our pastors, Brian and Jeanine.  You are friends, family, spiritual leaders, you have discipled us, you have loved us, and you have taught us more than we can even remember.

I am thankful that God's mercies are new every morning.  I am thankful that He is faithful even when I am not.  I am thankful that God is not the God I once thought Him to be, but He was kind enough to challenge my thinking to begin to recognize Him for the loving Father that He truly is.  I am thankful that He continues to daily pour out His measures of grace that I might continue to follow Him even more into the abundant life that He has planned for me since the beginning.  I am thankful that He loves me.  I am thankful that He even likes me.

I am thankful that I am continuing to learn to be thankful in spite of my wildly fluctuating circumstances, emotions, fears, and feelings.  I am thankful that I look a little more like Him today than I did yesterday.  He is good.

Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable; if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.  Philippians 4:8