Next please.

Well, that’s over. Thanksgiving of course, what did you think I meant? The holiday of excess. A pastor I know noted it – “gratitude and gluttony” Well done.

I am actually quite thankful for many, many things at this time in my life. I was not however all the excited to go through this particular holiday this year. So many people expected to hear about my thankfulness. To sit and listen to the tales of how God had done so many wonderful things for me. How so many amazing people stepped up or into my life. People expected me to be thankful and in turn they expected me to tell them all about it.

(run-on sentence full of expletives deleted)

Do I have anything to be grateful for? Yes. A wheel-barrel and a half full of things. Not just the typical, everyone has, everyday things. I gots stuff to be thankful for. I know it. I recognize it. I express it to those people that are directly involved with it.

I was not looking forward to this holiday because it was ‘personal’ this year. Not the pedestrian stuff, like getting through the awful recession without too much difficulty. Like not only being healthy but having the ability and resources to find out you are healthy. Like having family that not only cares for you but that you care for as well. If you are one of those that just said, “Well, of course!” go back and count that little gift over again. Family is a nightmare more often than not.

I could go on for several more paragraphs on the standard thankful-for list but why? Really, you know it. You probably rambled your way through it more than once, maybe even in the guise of a prayer you perfunctorily offered up while wondering where the jello mold was on the table.

What am I thankful for then? Lemme tell ya. More than anything else, I am thankful that I know the position I am in today, this very moment, is ALL due to decisions I made. Some a very long time ago. Others not to long ago. All my own doing. I am thankful that at this time in my life, I know that. There is no entitlement, nothing owed or deserved. There is what you work for and what you are willing to accept when it comes along.

There is what you work for and what you are willing to accept when it comes along. Amen. I have been fortunate enough this year to get both at the same time. Many of the people around me know I am not all that good at asking for help. (I know some of you disagree and you are entitled to you opinion. I am entitled to ignore it) I will, and do ask, I just really hate having too. That I am, have screwed up so much and so often that it is something I have to do is the real issue.

So – this year there has developed this balance, people that know I am in need, that supply opportunity for me to earn it. It sounds simple, like “Get a job!”. Well, that is not so simple. I have been looking, and looking and looking.  I was considered not qualified to spend eight hours a night in a rest top on the I-5 keeping the bathrooms clean. The letter actually said, they had found someone better qualified for the position. There is a very small difference between humbled and humiliated. Almost impossible to distinguish between the two.

What had occurred, what I stared to talk about in the previous paragraph, is the people, the have stepped in to offer me things to do, to earn some money, to work for what they would have just as happily ‘loaned’ or given to me. They know it would not have been refused. They also know the damage that help would have brought with it.

There are people better qualified than I to clean toilets. Easy to see that there are much more qualified people out there to do all of the things I was offered this year.  I am aware of that. I am thankful that I was able to do something, anything to earn the gifts. That is the short distance between humbled and humiliated. What I offered back was my very best effort. All I have left. And I a damn grateful I still have that to offer.

On the more standard list, I am in doors due to the true love and generosity of a friend. I am not hungry, because of so many others coming from the same place of love and generosity.

A dear friend’s struggle with cancer had been very positive, a ‘clean’ test only two weeks before the 26th.  Another dear friend called on me, accepted my offer, to be there on the day she was tested, for same. We are waiting through this long holiday weekend to find the results of those tests. It may not seem it but, to be asked, “will you come with me” is a gift and an honor.

As much as I have bitched and complained of my own situation regarding heath care, I must say, I am thankful I have been able to make some progress. Myself, waiting through this long holiday weekend for results of tests done on the 25th.

Contact made with a past friend. Peace with the choice to let another relationship go dormant. Doors open, doors close and I have not had a finger crushed! YEA!

Traveling vicariously through the eyes of friends while able to reminisce and share tales of my own travels.

Learning and teaching.

Still sober, still not interested nor tempted.

Still full of faith and doubt – HUGE gifts, both.Still carrying the minister title into the world of weddings and doing a damn good job for those that hire me. My very best effort, regardless of what it ‘looks like’ to anyone. I am good at this. “My couples” get a kick-butt wedding for having chosen me.

Still loved, no matter how much I struggle to understand or accept it.

Still crazy, mental and physical. Thankful for those few short months of sanity, that make me aware of it.

Yea, my life is abundant with gifts. I know it.

I do not think I shall give up bitching about things nor wanting or wishing for others. I will however, make a better effort to be just as loud about the being thankful for too.

A V