Thanksgiving

After a week of being somewhat disabled by a pinched nerve in my neck, I can now sit at the computer again and only feel minimal pain.  I will be back after the Thanksgiving holiday to give an update on my holiday week with my family!

As I prepare for this holiday week, I am reminded of the gift of a thankful heart.  Being grateful is a gift.  It's a developed habit; one that I am constantly refining.  Even when I have dark days (sometimes too many in a row), I can somehow always find something to be thankful for.  Every year my mom has us collect around the dinner table on Thanksgiving day and share one thing that we are thankful for.  Somehow it fans a little flicker of a flame of joy in our hearts as we hear the gratitude of our family in sometimes small things and sometimes major things. 

Right now my heart deeply longs for things not seen, but still I am grateful for so many things in my life.  I feel God is near me.  I feel His favor, but not in a "prosperity-I-have-everything" kind of way.  His favor is His delight in me, just the way I am, forever unchanging.  This I can always be thankful for.

So, as I embark on yet another Thanksgiving holiday, I choose to remember what I have been given, not what I lack.  How I am deeply loved, not where I long for more.  That I am blessed, not that I battle discontentment.  I choose to live in the moment with all it's joy, with all it's heartache.  I receive my cup, and pray to God He always sustain me.