Thankful

I didn’t post a ‘thankful’ list yesterday, obviously.

I try to pray every day and all my prayers start with being grateful; with saying thank you for every little thing I have. Even though I try to be thankful every day, there’s something to be said for taking a moment, even if it is the day after Thanksgiving and making a list of all the things one has to be thankful for.

Most importantly, I am so very grateful to still be here, to still have a life to live. I’m here, I’m alive, I’m able to mother my girls and be a wife to my husband.

I am thankful for knowledgeable doctors who have dedicated their lives to saving people like me.

I am thankful for my husband and how hard he works to make my life easier. I am not the easiest person to live with but he makes me laugh every single day and does things behind the scenes that just make my world better. I don’t necessarily believe in soul mates but I do think that if we’re very lucky, we find one of the few people in the world who make us better just by being with them.

I am grateful for my girls. They make life interesting. They are both so funny and they tolerate my inane sense of humor so well. They think I’m nuts and I’m okay with that. Every time Olivia asks me why I become British whenever I watch The Great British Baking Show I have to laugh. I tend to pick up whatever accent is being spoken. I can’t help it. So yes, when I watch TGBBS, I speak with a British accent. When we watch H2O (a cute Netflix show about mermaids set in Australia) I speak with an Australian accent. When we watched the Netflix show Insatiable, I picked up the adults’ southern accent. It’s annoying, sometimes even to me, but it’s fun too. You should try it!

I am grateful that both my parents are still alive and healthy. They’re always there for me, always loving me and having that kind of consistent support my entire life is definitely a big part of who I am.

My brothers are awesome to and I’m so thankful for them both. I love being the big sister, I always have.

Friends are another area for which I’m thankful. I got to see Julie three weekends in a row. That was AWESOME. We had gone more than a year without seeing each other (thank you, cancer treatments) but those three weekends were so great. Even if the visits weren’t long enough, they were what we needed. I hope everyone has at least one friend they can go a long time without seeing but when they do finally get together, it’s as if they were never apart.

I am thankful for my faith. It has sustained me greatly over the past year. Knowing without a doubt that this is just one part of the world, the part that we can see and smell and hear is so comforting. Knowing there is more, there is an ‘after’ helps me when I’m at my lowest. I am so very, VERY thankful to my beautiful cousin Amy who has touched me from Heaven, let me know she’s not really gone but has moved on and is still loving us has deepened my faith and my belief in more than the here and now.

Finally, I’m so grateful for love; romantic love, parental love, sibling love, friend love; love that transcends life and death and illness and pain. Love guides us daily and I have to believe there is more love in this world than hate. I have to believe that love will conquer hate and make the world a better place. I believe that Heaven is built on love, the love God has for us, the love we have for Him, the love we have for each other.