Thanks and Giving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Other than the food, it isn’t over the board commercialized.  It is a day to sit down to a meal with those you love and spend your life with.  To look inside of yourself and realize your blessings, and to focus on what you have, not what you don’t.  What could be better than that?  It’s a shame we only have one day a year to focus on thanks.  We should all be doing this every day. 

The last 3 Thanksgiving’s have been tough for me.  Losing my Dad is something that still hasn’t healed in my heart.  Then we lost Sandy, my stepmom.  It’s blatantly obvious every year when we sit down to the table that there are 2 missing.  I feel that emptiness every year and it is hard for me.  I am sure it will be tomorrow too.  But this year those two empty spots at the table will be filled by two children.  Two children a year ago I never even could imagine.  Yet there they will sit.  With our family.  With their family.  They are super excited about Thanksgiving this year.  And so am I.  They have given me yet another reason to be thankful. 

I don’t have time to list everything I am thankful for.  I have a lot.  If you have read my blog at all this year you know I have plenty of reasons to be thankful - an amazing husband, 3 children who are beautiful in each their own way, family and friends who love and support us, a lovely home, a car to get us where we need to go, and a pantry full of food.  We have more than so many.  As we sit down to dinner tomorrow those I will be thinking of are those who have no table to sit at or no way to get to that table.  Our soldiers, the homeless, those without families, those living in poverty.  As Robert Louis Stevenson said “Keep your eyes open to your mercies.  The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.”  Happy Thanksgiving and I am thankful to all of you for reading my blog and sharing in my life journey!