What I'm Grateful For

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the idea of a day set aside to share food and companionship with others as we celebrate gratitude. There is no big commercialization of Thanksgiving – witness the shift in the stores from Halloween directly to Christmas. Thanksgiving’s value to the consumer society is only in its passing to the shopping extravaganza of Black Friday.

So I love this day. I don’t have to buy presents or send out cards. I don’t have to fight crowds in the mall. I just get to be grateful.

So why don’t I feel more grateful this Thanksgiving? I can rattle off numerous blessings, big and small. By most anyone’s standards, I haven’t a care in the world. And yet my heart is heavy.

Perhaps because people near and dear to me are approaching this holiday season without loved ones who have recently died – a young husband and father, a wife of many seasons, a daughter. Perhaps because our political leaders continue to engage in tactics and rhetoric that would be comical if they weren’t so destructive. Perhaps because I know that last night as the temperature plummeted, there were homeless people in my neighborhood looking for a place to stay warm and dry, or perhaps to just stay alive.

So how can I take this heaviness and find the gratitude in it? I can be even more humbly grateful for the blessings I have, knowing how fleeting and precious our treasured moments are. I can be grateful for awareness of other people’s suffering. I can be grateful for an open heart to feel compassion. I can be grateful for the abundant resources I can share through contributing to shelters and food banks. I can show my gratitude by saying thank you to as many people as possible. And I can tell the people who bless my life how much I love them.

I hope that all of you find joy in this holiday of thankfulness.

I would like to share a blessing that someone sent to me recently.

“Here is my prayer – that you are given at least daily a reminder from at least one of those to whom your presence on this Earth has been important that you are remembered and that you are loved.”