Thanksgiving Grace

While waiting at a traffic light, my Monkeys watched a crew of men with ladders climbing trees. "Mommy, what are they doing?"

"Putting up Christmas lights."

"Oh, when we get home, we should do that!"

"After Thanksgiving."

"Why?"

"Because Thanksgiving is first."

Of course there was more to our conversation, but this afternoon I looked up a site someone had mentioned to me, 100 days to Christmas. (Today is 42 days to Christmas by the way.) Today's inspirational thought encouraged me think now about what I'm thankful for, and not wait until all the hurry and scurry of Thanksgiving guests to try to think up something. Indeed. This one bit me last year.

The hosts of Thanksgiving dinner decided that grace should be everyone seated at the table mentioning one or two things he or she was thankful for. I suppose in some families this is the usual Thanksgiving grace, but I had never done this before, and all I could think was This was the year I my grandmother and my grandfather died. I didn't say that, of course. I stammered, couldn't think, and yet the hosts pressed me for something. My husband had shrugged his way out of saying anything in particular, but somehow I was not let off the hook. Fortunately he helped me, whispering "We bought a house." Maybe this counted for him too, but I was still irritated that I had gotten the thumbscrews over needing to be thankful for something.

Anyway, this year...

I'm thankful for my husband and our two daughters, for my husband's job, for the church family we've found here, for my family far away, for his family not so far away, and for all the second and third and fourth etc chances that I get to try to do things better the next time, with each new day, as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend. For all this I give thanks. Amen.