Blessings

I think I’m finally getting on top of this bug, and none too soon. If I don’t show up tomorrow, Thanksgiving will have to go on without the green bean casserole! Perish the thought! I’m also making sweet potato casserole with pecan topping (a dish I’ve noticed is not very widely included in Northwest Thanksgivings—must be something we picked up down South) and the cranberry jello mold, a creamy, fruity concoction that my grandmother always had on the table, and of which I’ve been wont to take much larger helpings than I should.

We’ve been invited, along with my sister and Paul’s dad, to join the Thanksgiving feast at Steve and Kathy’s house. When it comes to holidays, Kathy truly embraces that old credo “the more the merrier”, and we are blessed to be among her circle of friends.

Speaking of blessings, I have so many in my life. My cup truly does overflow, and yet the blessings keep on coming.

I am saved, loved, and guided by God Himself, who sent His son to pay the price for me, and that simple fact is at the root of all my joy.

I have a thoughtful, funny, wonderful husband who loves me and our children and is a strong spiritual leader for our family. We have been over a lot of bumps in the road, and I’m sure there are more to come, but I’m not afraid. He is my best friend.

I am mother to two amazing, unique children, full of creativity and affection and general goodwill towards everything and everybody. Their innocence brings tears to my eyes, and their simple faith inspires mine. It is the most awe-inspiring thing to watch their personalities emerge and to see them grow and change over the years. What a gift, and a responsibility, to walk beside them.

I am encircled by good friends, sisters who share their time, their hopes, their sorrows, their secrets, their lessons, and their love. They hold up my worries in prayer, as I hold up theirs. They know how to laugh, and remind me how when I forget. They are each of them evidence of God’s providence in my life, and I am thankful for them.

My physical needs are provided for, and I have never known the ache of true hunger or the cold of not having a home. I have opportunities to reach out to those who have, and those opportunities are blessings, too. In Christ, I can offer true warmth along with blankets, and true sustenance along with food. Keep them coming, Lord.

My days are bursting with hundreds of blessings, great and small: crayon drawings, cold Cokes, hot tea, scrapbooks filled with family memories, movies, good books, warm lights in the living room, a closet full of shoes, my iPod, silly jokes, time to think, a heaped up laundry basket, music that means something to me, the mountains outside my window, the Spirit inside my heart…

Thank you for all of it, Lord!

Now I guess I better get started on my contributions to Thanksgiving dinner. It shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I’m not cooking the turkey, or the mashed potatoes. And since the great Cornstarch Fiasco of 2003, I’m not allowed anywhere near the gravy.

That’s probably for the best.

Overdose?

I’m not sure what happened to today. I woke up hacking and coughing, took some Robitussin, and now, some nine hours later, my memory of the intervening hours has shrunk down to a shadowy montage of interlocking scenes: laying like a slug on the couch, pulling together some sort of noontime meal for the rugrats out of peanut butter and graham crackers, putting loads of plague-ridden sheets through the laundry and spraying Febreze around willy-nilly in an effort to dispel that medicinal pall that sometimes settles over sickrooms. I think I might have gotten a shower in there somewhere. And I’m pretty sure the alien visitation was a hallucination. Too many consecutive episodes of Roswell, perhaps.

They should make those letters on the side of the Robitussin dosage cup a little bigger. “TSP” and “TBS” look a lot alike, you know?