An attitude

Unable to donate my Facebook status to a daily iteration of the things for which I am grateful, I thought I'd take a moment or two to write about them in my blog. Among my friends, children, coffee, and beer seem to top the list, but the people around me are grateful for a great many things while I, the Thanksgiving Grinch, seem to be feeling the pinch of a horrid year and am struggling with gratitude. Certainly, I'm delighted and blessed in a bevy of ways - and I am well aware of it. I could create an extensive list of the things I know I should be thankful for and I could recite rote the things I know I'm grateful for despite the fact that I am having a hard time feeling it.

That's easy. Listing the miracles in our lives is a pretty simple process. I'm challenging myself right now to look at the hard stuff -- and find the small miracles hidden within for which I should be extraordinarily thankful. Here's what I have so far:

Some days I experience phantom pains so stunning it is as if David was standing beside me and suddenly sucked away in some sort of science fiction portal. His death continues to be an intensely painful experience from these past few years and I miss him in ways I cannot even begin to describe. Yet his death, the days building to it and the wake it left behind some of the most amazing blessings I can describe. We lost David that day, yes, and at the same time our family grew by leaps and bounds. Our church family gathered around us and reminded us that we were not alone -- and we grew closer to the Duminy family and my new brother with bad taste in Basketball teams, Dan W. We're certainly a motley crew, but I love them deeply.

And then there's the music, the red, the church season in which David died - which, though painful, remains celebratory for me. I cannot sing "For All the Saints" without thinking of David, of my buddy who drove 3 hours to say "Hi" and sit in for the funeral, of the red, the banners, and my personal mantra of that time: "You can sing or you can cry. Pick one." Still, now, some days I sing and other days I cry. I realize now that both are fine. And for that I am grateful.

The experience drove me into the church - and into another group of people for which I am grateful. I've learned to have a new relationship with my pastors -- one which will probably never reflect the depth and late-night theological discussions I had with David, but will bloom into its own at some point now that it has been given the chance.

And then, last year. Grandpa. While it's difficult to find things to be grateful for during a seven-day period of watching Grandpa, sapped by a stroke, fade away, there were small miracles there too: a room packed with his wife, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren lifting their voices to Christmas hymns, my grandmother with a strength and faith I had only before seen in my mother, the beauty of a couple so in love after sixty years of marriage. As I watched my grandmother lean over Grandpa's face and whisper to him, I remember wishing only that I had the strength, commitment, and luck to live that long with my own husband.

And this year. It's hard to find things to be thankful for this year - between our miscarriages and Tim's business changes, but we are deeply blessed. I have more gratitude and patience with my own kids now than I ever have before. Having them seemed once so easy but now seems such an impossible miracle. A howling, back-talking, screeching, impossible miracle. And while they may frustrate me at times, at the end of the day, I know I'm blessed to have them.

I'm blessed to have a lot right now. The little things, the big things, and even the things that aren't that good. We've experienced so much beauty alongside tragedy over these past three years, I simply wanted to insure that everyone around us knew that we know it. We know how blessed we are. And while we, or I, in particular, may seem rather bitter right now, please remember that my gratitude runs deeper than it ever has before.