thankful thursdays 11/24

Nov 24, 2011

Here it is – my annual Thanksgiving Day Thankful Thursdays post (except it is a few days late – please forgive!)

• I am grateful for my Heavenly Father. I am grateful to know I am a literal child of God, a beloved daughter of the Almighty. As I have been studying various worldviews the past few months, I have been filled with gratitude for this knowledge. I think it must be rather depressing to believe that humans do not have a Creator or a plan for their lives. I know I was created as a daughter of God to come to earth at this time and learn the lessons I need to become like my Father in Heaven. This knowledge is the foundation of my everything I am and do and I don’t know that I would last one day without this knowledge.
• I am grateful for my Savior, Jesus the Christ. I am thankful for His willingness to take the sins, sorrows, pain, and suffering of each of His Father’s children upon Him so He could offer an infinite atonement for our sins, succor our sorrows, understand our pain, and be with us completely in our suffering. I am grateful for the opportunity to repent of the things I do wrong and for His gentle voice guiding me to a life of peace, trust, faith, and happiness. I am grateful to know He loves me and to not only know it with my head, but to feel it with my heart. I am grateful to be able to give my burdens to Him. I am grateful for His redeeming love, His endless mercy, and his all-encompassing holiness. These things fill me with a hope that is soul-sustaining and peace that is not explainable.
• I am grateful for my husband. I cannot do justice to my feelings for him with mere words. He listens to my fears and helps me see through them. He calms my tears with his words of comfort. He sees a vision of what I can be and has devoted himself to helping me see that vision too…and then to become it. He believes in me. He values my ideas. He is committed to our marriage. He keeps his covenants. He loves me. He is so much more than I ever dreamed of. He is kind to others. He is forgiving. He sees the best in the world. He is patient. He is an amazing kisser. He is not dismayed or discouraged by my inadequacies as a wife and mother. He is funny. His heart is pure. I love him.
• I am grateful for my children. I have been blessed with the sacred stewardship of mothering four amazing souls. Each of them have blessed my life immeasurably. Through mothering, I learn about God’s plan for me. I learn how to love, to serve, to give my life to make their lives better. I begin to understand a little more about Him and His love for His children. I am grateful to be part of a family where we are dependent on one another and we must learn to work and laugh together in order to be happy. I am grateful to be an in-the-trenches mother who is here day-in and day-out and not a career-driven-woman who has a trophy child raised by a nanny or daycare. I am grateful to know I am guided in my mothering decisions by a God who knows my children, their needs, and their missions far better than I do.
• I am grateful for my mom and dad. They gave me a great foundation for my life in so many ways. They adored me. They taught me. They played with me. They coached my teams, drove me to practices, cheered me on in all my numerous endeavors, believed in my dreams, and helped me achieve them. They taught me that I was something special and I could do anything I wanted to do if I worked hard enough. They still do.
• I am grateful for music and its power to reach deep down inside my soul and speak truth to the innermost parts of me.
• I am grateful for a home that protects us from the elements, allows us to acquire books and clothes and food so we can spend time thinking instead of living in survival mode where the next thought is only about how to find food and shelter. I am grateful for the space we have to learn. I am grateful for the land we live on and the great blessing my children have of exploring and playing outdoors. I am grateful to not have neighbors ten feet away from me that can hear all the goings-on of my life. I am grateful to be surrounded by good neighbors that let me borrow some eggs, plow out my driveway, and love on my children.
• I am grateful for mountains. Not only are they beautiful to look at, they inspire me to greatness.
• I am grateful for trees. I love hearing the leaves rustle, the birds chirp, and the squirrels run up and down. I love sitting in their shade. I love walking through the forest. I love seeing the trees at my mom’s house. She has tended to them for the last 30 years and they are finally getting big (it is a rather difficult task to get anything to grow in the high mountain plains of Wyoming where the growing season is about 6 weeks and the dirt is rock solid). They inspire me to plant some trees on my plot of land and trust that my grandchildren will get to play in their shade, eat of their fruit, and rake up their leaves.
• I am grateful for a body that works well. It is such a blessing to be able to walk, run, see, hear, lift, touch, smell, birth, eat, process waste products, taste, sleep, breathe, and laugh…all without much trouble at all.
• I am grateful to be me. I have gobs of faults and a myriad of weaknesses, but I like myself. I have a heart that wants to do good, a zany side of me that is a lil’ bit hard to take, and a gentle side that does a fabulous job nurturing babies and new mamas. I like to think and I like to be silly, which seems to be an interesting combination. I like doing hard things. I love others. I come face to face with my inadequacies every day and sometimes they get me down, but usually I am able to take them for what they are and make the best of it (or the worst of it, as the case may be!). I can usually laugh at myself. I am stubborn and difficult to live with and have a hard time letting go of an idea. All of these things (and many more!) make up me and I am grateful I am who I am.
• I am grateful for the meals my gymnastics students make for our family in trade for tuition. These meals make my life SO MUCH EASIER! Thank you to each of you that bless our home with your delicious food!
• I am grateful for my plethora of friends. It is so wonderful to have people to laugh with and cry with, to create with and work with, to learn with, to change the world with. I am so grateful to be surrounded by women who support my dreams and inspire me to become better. I am grateful to be able to call them in the middle of the night. I am grateful to be accepted, loved, and understood. I am so richly blessed by the women and families in my life.
• I am grateful for the sun. Not only does it give us heat, it gives us beauty. God could have made our planet get warm in lots of other ways, but He chose to give us a sun that puts on a majestic display as it nears the horizon.
• I am also grateful for the moon. Right now it is a sliver laying on its right hand side. Looking at it does something deep down in my soul…gives me some measure of peace that all things are in order and in their proper place. Just now Keziah said “Mom, look at the moon, it is adorable.” I should say it is. I also love that my mom has a love affair with the moon. She calls us fairly regularly to tell us to run outside and look at the moon. Because of this, my children all love studying the moon and calling their grandma when it looks interesting to them.
• I am grateful for Orion. This grouping of stars gives me courage. I can’t explain it, I just love looking at it. I kind of feel like a warrior for truth. Do you love Orion…or is this just something my mom and I share?
• I am grateful for my big extended family. It is ginormous. I know in 1982, when they did a family census, there were over a thousand people descended from them. Almost thirty years later, I have no idea how many of us there are. When I was little we had an annual reunion down at the homestead of my great-great grandparents and hundreds and hundreds of people would camp out in the fields of their ranch, gather under the giant parachute to eat their meals, dance in the barn, and march in the Pioneer Day parade. My grandma was raised in that little two-room cabin, sometimes with 21 people living in it, and 5000 chickens out back. Growing up nearby that land, surrounded by relatives was one of the greatest blessings of my life. We moved to the town of my pioneer roots when I was seven and I have been thankful ever since. I felt part of something bigger than myself. I felt I had roots that I could count on and expectations to live up to. I had people who loved me….lots of them.
• I am grateful for flushing toilets and a working septic system. What a blessing sanitation is!
• I am grateful for washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, heaters, electricity, computers, the internet, and all sorts of other technology that make our lives easier, our communication faster, and our ability to effect change in this world greatly increased.
• I am grateful for my blog. I am thankful to have a place to share my thoughts; to get them out of head and more fully into my heart. As I write my thoughts down they become more real and more part of me. Additionally, it is a wonderful way for me to record the happenings of my life so my children have a record of who I am and what we did. An added bonus is the connection I get to make with other people and to be part of their lives as they spend their precious time reading my thoughts.
• I am grateful for the people in my life who love my children and help them, teach them, and encourage them. Mothering is a lot of work and while I reject the notion that it takes a village to raise a child, I believe that families are greatly blessed by the influence of others and I am so grateful for the hearts that have given much to my children.
• I am grateful for my books! The written word is a magical thing. Education, edification, the transfer of culture, the infusion of courage, and the power of myth are part of that magic. It has an enormous power to change the world. It has and it does…every single day. I am grateful to be living in an era where written language is easily accessible and books can be a such an integral part of our lives.
• I am grateful to have just had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family. We were blessed to have a wonderful meal (and a fridge full of leftovers), loads of laughter, and plenty of time to relax. I am grateful we were able to come (all of us, except for my brother Cameron, boo-hoo!) and enjoy being together.
• I am grateful for the lessons I learned from my lump. I am still working on that whole situation, but for now, I am immensely grateful it was benign and that I am here on this earth with my family.

I could go on and on for many more lines, but I will close this enormously long post by saying one more thing…thank you for being in my life and for taking the time to connect with me on here. The connections I make with my readers touch my heart and bring me joy. Thank you.