I adore Thanksgiving ... everything about it! My favorite part of the holiday is just what its name implies,
celebrating the opportunity to give thanks.
Reflecting upon the ways we are blessed in each of our respective lives is such a wonderful way to remind ourselves
and teach our kids how fortunate we all are to even have the most basic of our needs met, let alone any wants indulged as well. I’ve been reminded of this many times in my life in a variety of ways.
Last year I had the opportunity to sit as a panelist for a discussion following
the showing of an independent film called “Garbage Dreams.” It was a documentary-style film that AETN presented as part of its “Independent Lens” festival that followed three young teenage boys who were members of an Egyptian lower caste called the Zaballeen and live in the world’s largest
“garbage village” located on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
These young people and their families work and live in a modern-day slum trying to carve out a future for themselves and those they love through sorting recyclables by hand with only the most basic equipment out of 4,000 tons of trash per day.
Watching and discussing this film based on the lives of three kids not much older than my own children who are working in the same industry I have chosen as my career, except they are forced to overcome every obstacle imaginable,
whereas in our country we have every convenience at our disposal really hit home. Seeing their determination in the face of unimaginable adversity to try and overcome the circumstances they were born into has stuck and reminded
me to be truly thankful for all things. I have tried lately to really take this sentiment to heart.
So, even in the midst of my life’s minor inconveniences, I pray to always be thankful. That means I will choose to be thankful for:
…an Oreo smashed and stuck to my car’s running board four days after the kids last ate Oreos in the car; I’m thankful I have three healthy kids who love Oreos that I have the privilege to haul around in the car, messy as they might be.
…a flooded kitchen floor and soaking
wet two-year old that just discovered
how much fun the water dispenser on the door of the fridge could be. I am thankful to be more fortunate than over one billion people living in this world who do not have access to clean drinking
water and would do anything to see it covering their children and floors.
…the three out of seven burned or otherwise inedible dinners I manage per week. I am thankful to have food to make dinner disasters from. This means our family is more blessed than 854 million worldwide who go hungry each day…and I’m also thankful for Little Caesars’ pizza right down the street to bail us out on nights where things go too far beyond repair.
…five different television remote controls, each increasing in degree of frustration that I simply cannot grasp understanding of to save my life, so I hand them over to my eight-year old son who has mastered working them since age five; I am thankful he’s a smart kid and that we own a television, some do not.
…arms that get sore and tired from carrying my toddler through the store when she’s fussy and refuses to walk. I am thankful God has allowed me to have arms full of children; some women pray daily to fill arms that are empty.
…and most of all for God who loves me enough to send His Son to die for me and has given me three messy, inquisitive, smart, and loving children and a beyond-wonderful husband to share my life with in a country where simply being a citizen allows my children a chance to become whatever their hearts desire and they work hard enough to achieve.
So bottom line, I am thankful for Thanksgiving. It’s a joy to stop and count the ways we are all blessed enough to give thanks. I wish you all joy in counting your blessings as well, even if some of them are on the surface a bit camouflaged, nonetheless, they are there when we stop to look.