This is my brain on Thanksgiving: Yay, it's turkey day! It's a holiday! It's almost like Christmas! Then my brain says: Oh no, I'm doing dinner! Shop! Prep! Cook! Clean up!
And then I tell my brain to listen to my heart. It's a holiday that allows me to gather the people I love most at my home, around my table. And my brain says Yes, it's a time to give thanks for so many amazing things in my life.
5 things I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving
If there's a turkey in the oven, then it must be Thanksgiving! Photo, Ethan Lofton
Everything I take for granted
Every day, I wake up. That in itself is something to be grateful for. I have use of all my senses — I can see, hear, taste, touch and smell things. And I use these senses all the time, but rarely do I stop to think how lucky I am to have them. Until this week, when my friend Pat sent me this video to watch, which did make me stop and think – and cry.
I’m working, but not everyone is
I get to come into the office every day and work with some pretty amazing people. Even if I’m not in the greatest mood when I walk in, inevitably, someone will make me laugh. I’m happy to be here. But sometimes I complain that I have to work. If only I could win a lottery! Why can’t I be independently wealthy?! But with a growing global economic crisis and so many people unemployed, I know I’m lucky. Because financial stress is no joke.
For the opportunity to love the people in my life
I can’t imagine how different my life would be without my family. Or my friends. And I don't want to because they make my life a better place. Sometimes I don’t really feel like making a call in the evenings or driving my mom to an appointment or picking up my son. But I do. After all, every day, the oxygen in the air is there for us to breathe, and it’s not like it ever says, Hey, you owe me your life! Look what a love like that can do.
For food on the table
I can’t wait to make squash soup, get a turkey into the oven, and have everyone over to my place. It’s one of my favourite meals. But earlier this year, I travelled with World Vision to visit families in rural Cambodia, where people struggle every day with issues of food security and not being able to get enough food on the table to nourish themselves and their families. And I thought, but for geography, and my place of birth, I would be having this struggle, too.
For people who make our world a better place
Like Steve Jobs, who passed this week. Maybe he didn’t start the fire, but he started a revolution. Steve Jobs and Apple changed our world. But what I find most touching about this man is his grace under fire. When he resigned from the company this past summer, he wrote a letter that went out to all employees. His last paragraph reads: “I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.” That’s the kind of gratitude that comes from greatness.
Are you grateful?
