Thankful Tuesday: A Grateful June Update

Thankful Tuesday: A Grateful June Update June 7, 2011

How’s your Grateful June going? I’ll admit I’m a bit of a failure in the grateful list making department this week. But I did manage to keep a little list of my thankfuls two out of seven days. (If you forgot as well, join us this week in keeping track of the seven things you’re grateful for everyday. Here’s a link to Ann Voskamp’s Gratitude booklet.)

Seven marvelous sweet things:

  • Every morning I wake up to a grunting baby who, just like me, is struggling to open his eyes and remember where he belongs. Too often I forget what a miraculous job I have that I am the face he sees first.  His first smile in the morning, as soon as his eyes focus in on my face, as soon as my voice recites his waking up poem (“Good Morning Merry Sunshine!” just as my mother always recited to me)…that smile is open mouthed and accompanied by a squeak, and two jerky arms flinging out of his swaddled blanket. Having a baby is difficult, but not then. Then, it’s heaven.
  • Every night, I sit in my city apartment with its bay windows on the third floor, looking out into a lit up skyline. I was never a city girl (have I become one?), but I hope I never forget what beauty I lived in for a while, what these nights and early mornings of drinking coffee and seeing the sun lift up over the buildings did for my soul.
  • I’m grateful for my husband’s wisdom when our son tore up his library book (for no apparent reason) this past weekend and Chris made him choose a toy to “sell” so that August can pay for the replacement library book. What a gift to have a man teaching my son about honesty and sacrifice and responsibility.
  • I’m grateful that the second migraine of my life, this past Sunday night, while Chris was in Austin, came in the middle of the night when no children needed me. And that my cat joined me on the couch while I watched a terrible movie from 3:30 to 6 am and prayed for the pain to stop. Cat fur is a gift for flaming heads everywhere. (I’m also thankful that the headache had mostly faded by the time my boys woke up.)
  • My husband’s new company is going to pack my house! What?!!! That, my friends, is a gift that means I get to spend these last few weeks having coffees with people I love instead of digging through dumpsters for cheap cardboard boxes. Thankful.
  • Last night when a couple of friends were over, keeping me company for dinner and helping me get the boys to bed, August gave them kisses and said: “I love you very much.” The best part? I know he meant it. He loves them. It will be hard to leave such community. But, how can I not thank God that such community existed here all along, waiting for my family to find it?

What are your seven things?


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