7 Quick Reasons to be Thankful

In light of it being nearly Thanksgiving, indeed, we are basically celebrating it already with a little two week holiday, I thought it would behoove my general spiritual state to come up with at least seven something's to be thankful for, since I'm such a whiner. Let's see if I can do it without the shedding of blood.

One

As some commercial or other says (look at me, so hip and with it, watching tv and knowing what commercials there are) the only thing that matters in life is your health, and I have that, so yay. I do, of course, quibble with the premise. I don't think that the only thing that matters is your health. I think that thought is a big pile of pagan malarkey but I'm willing to be thankful that I'm currently healthy.

Two

Even so, I'm thankful that I'm not going to live forever in this currently healthy body. And more also I'm thankful that Matt has been lying to me about my gray hairs. Every day I go with my gray hairs in sorrow down to Sheol (that's another way of saying, I'm going down to do the laundry, or I was just doing laundry) and I stand there, surrounded by piles and piles and piles of clothes, my hands drying and cracking from the folding and my lungs filling with the gentle scent of mold, and I thank Jesus that I won't be doing this forever. Some day I'll be made new and all the laundry will go away and I just like to think about that day sometimes, and feel really happy about it.

Three

I'm thankful for my children. I'm thankful that they're turning out to be fairly interesting. They are mostly foolish and selfish and sinful, like me, but occassionally they surprise me by saying or doing clever or interesting or helpful things. Just now, though I should say she is motivated for purely selfish reasons, Elphine is getting everyone ready to go ice skating, and then she is going to feed them breakfast. It's because she really really really wants to go. But it is helpful none the less.

Four

I'm thankful that I don't live in Buffalo or Siberia. I complain a lot about the cold, but there are colder more forsaken windswept sorrows and I'm grateful not to have anything to do with them. I don't even live in Ithaca. I don't have to face that long cold terrible hill to go to class. I merely cast my eye on the frozen landscape and try to remember to pray for those who might be looking for warmth, both the poor and the college student and maybe even the Russian dissident.

Five

I'm thankful that my mother rushed around and found this wonderful song, which I had been so longing for, and hoping perhaps to use in the Christmas pageant. It's a GK Chesterton poem to a much nicer tune than anything you'll hear on YouTube, and believe me, I listened and heard.

Basically I'm grateful for my mother, and for Matt's mother, and both our fathers and that I am not alone with no parents or children, like the four people in Quartet in Autumn which I have to return to the library, sob, even though I didn't finish it.

Six

I'm really grateful for Matt. Being on holiday, I got to go to his Tuesday class, which right now is in the thick of Genesis two or three or something fraught, and I sat looking across the room at Gladys and Elphine who sit there and listen to their own dad and eat something special like goldfish, and draw pictures and occassionaly even ask questions, and I was really grateful (is this a run on sentence? Whatever) because first of all, he's a really good teacher, but second of all, he's personable and engaging, and third of all, the examples that he pulled from our home life, being that the text naturally encompassed both marriage and children, were true and fair and not highly elevating (look at us, we're so amazing) but gentle also, not a mashing into the ground of what wretched sinners we are. He painted a fair picture of our lives, a picture that the girls recognized, a picture that I recognized. And he illumined and exposited the scripture, clearly and kindly. In a time when the church is beset on every side, and pastors are discouraged and sometimes tumbling headlong into terrible sin, or tragic error, I am grateful that Matt keeps a disciplined orderly, perhaps even boring, routine, as I do also. We do the same set of things together every day, over and over, and we circle through and talk about the same problems, over and over, and we don't have much opportunity to do anything fancy or amazing. It's just very ordinary. And that is such a mercy, because the fancier you get, and the more opportunities for fame or wealth or acclaim, the greater the possible fall. Goodness, even if we did want to do something crazy, the cold makes us reconsider it the second we stick our noses out the door. “Let's stay home” we mutter, “and eat another bowl of boring soup, and thank our lucky stars, I mean providence and Jesus, that we've got it so good.”

Seven

I have lots lots lots more to be thankful for, of course, but I'll round this out by wallowing in deep thankfulness for this blog, and for the few, the crazy, who check in here every day, or every so often, and read and comment and lurk. Every day I discover that I love writing a little more than I did the day before, and I wish everyone would leave me alone, just for five more minutes, so I could try to have another couple words put together. Without the internet and blogs and facebook and email, how lonely we would all be for each other! We would have to sit down and write stuff on paper and put it in envelopes and try to get the post, horror of horrors, to send it, and we wouldn't have even heard of each other (well, except me having heard of my mother). The circle has widened out so much for me, through this blog, and I'm so grateful to have met, both in person, and on facebook, so many interesting people.

Happy Thanksgiving Ya'll!