Thankfulness

My favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is when we go around the table and say what we're thankful for.  I know it can be cheesy, but vocalizing the blessings you've received is an incredibly humbling and enlightening experience.  This year my big thanks was for things not going according to plan.  Given my profession, I obviously have lists of far-reaching strategies for each next step in my life. After grad school I expected to be starting over in some new city with some fancy new job, not working two sorta planning jobs back in Michigan.  But only because things went unaccordingly did I get to run the Turkey Trot downtown after not enough sleep, spend two Thanksgiving dinners with wonderful people, play the guitar in a trio, play board games that I previously thought too difficult, and spend memorable times with my best friend and her (my second) family.  In these last few unexpected months, I've been blessed by closer relationships and unbridled happiness because of them. I sometimes get too hung up on my career path - afraid that I'll lose it all if one step is in the wrong direction.  The non-plan is teaching me patience, and reminding me that sometimes we need to be built up by people who love us before we're ready to go chase the next dream.

People who know me well know that I experience occassional "moments of perfection" where I can feel every one of my five senses and the world seems flawless and heavenly for its mundanity.  This quotation explains that more eloquently than I ever could:

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."

I'm thankful that I believe in a God that I can thank.  Every breath in my lungs, step that I take, color I perceive, and person I love feels like a gift and a promise that there's still some reason that I'm alive.  I get all of these wonderful sensations of life every day, knowing that I'm receiving them so I can give something back.  Gratitude is pretty grand.