Thanks and Giving

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! This is my favorite time of the year, and I look forward to consuming lots of yummy food on Thursday.

This year I decided to make another list of the things I am thankful for, so here goes:

* My family. I am so blissfully thankful for my family because I am fully aware that we may not always be together.

* God's mercy on us. He's carried us through the worst of times and not only given us the grace to get through it, but also the mercy to not take everything away from us. In other words, he let us keep Emma.

* St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

* True friends. Some of you I know "in person", and some of you I only know online, but I have many true friends and I am thankful for you.

* Stuffing. Yes, I love stuffing. I like "dressing", but I waaaaayyy prefer stuffing. And pumpkin pie. With Cool Whip.

    

 

What are you thankful this year?

Grumble Grumble

Do you have a complaint? A grumble? Something that's bugging you?

I've done my fair share of grumbling, especially lately, but then I got to thinking. Sometimes it's best to keep it to myself.

I don't mean we never have the right to whine a bit. We all need to let it out from time to time, but this post is to remind others (and myself) to be mindful of what they say and when. There is a time for everything, and that means sometimes it ISN'T the time.

When Emma was in the hospital in the beginning, I had to stay completely off social media sites. Why? Because I couldn't take one more person's whiney post about the "troubles" in their lives (usually troubles they'd put on themselves) while my daughter was fighting for her very next breath. I didn't want to read about anyones disappointment that their boyfriend had to work overtime, or how someone got a bad haircut. I wanted to shout, "Some people have REAL problems!".

This week there was something called the Fiddler's Convention in our town. We like to go, but this year we couldn't. I almost--almost!--posted on a certain social media network about how I wanted to go and was sad we weren't, but then I remembered how I felt when people posted their menial whines in the past. I decided not to post. Then I got online and relief washed over me that I hadn't posted my grumbles.

One friend had posted an update on her 10-day-old infant who is in NICU and on oxygen, and who is facing open heart surgery. One friend had posted an update on her father's funeral. And yet another friend had posted an update of her visit with the funeral home after she'd made arrangements for her 10-year-old son.

I don't have any real problems, not right now anyway. I encourage us all to cut out our grumbles and just be thankful! What are you thankful for today?

Thanks and Giving

This season is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s Thanks and Giving campaign.  We are urged to give thanks for the healthy kids in our life, and give to those who are not.  I have a confession to make.  I despise this quote, and those commercials.  I felt this way long before Emma got sick, actually.

Six months before Emma was diagnosed, some friends’ little boy was diagnosed with cancer.  This was right at Thanksgiving time—right when St. Jude was airing these commercials.  EVERYTIME one came on the TV I would start sobbing.  Literally.  I would immediately start praying profusely, thanking God that Emma was healthy.  I would say something like, “Thank you, God.  Thank you, God.  Thank you, God.  Please keep her healthy.  Please God.”

I would usually finish the prayer with words for my friends’ son.  I spent hours upon hours praying for them.  And I begged God to never let “that” happen to me. 

I believe that God was preparing me.  We know from the Bible that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle (that’s not to say that any of us particularly like to hear this quote).  However, getting thrown into the arena without any warning would be much worse than getting a little introduction to the subject beforehand. 

God was letting me recognize what I would come to think of as my greatest fear, so that I could learn to not fear.  He had mercy on me, and said, “While you think this is the one thing in life that you couldn’t handle, I’m going to show you that with My help, you CAN handle it.  With My help you can do anything.”

Today I dislike these commercials because I don’t like being on the receiving end of those “gifts” that St. Jude is asking for. I would much rather be the one doing the giving. Have you heard the Bible verse, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”? Well, I can attest that it is true. And yet, how can I not be thankful for the gifts? The people supporting St. Jude saved my daughter’s life.

So all of that is a round-about way of saying I’m thankful for St. Jude, even their tear jerking commercials, and especially their wonderful, fabulous, kind-hearted, caring, loving donors.  If you have ever donated to St. Jude, I am personally telling you thank you today.

Here’s the rest of my Thanksgiving "What I'm Thankful For" list:

1.      God's mercy.  Without God’s love I would be on my way to hell.  Not because I’m a “bad” person.  Not because I haven’t done enough good to make it to heaven.  Just because Heaven is perfect, and I am not.  God loves me anyway, and sent a way for me to get there—Jesus.

2.       My husband and children.  I have the best husband in the whole wide world.  He is an amazing father, provider (he works himself to the bone sometimes!), and husband.  And my girls?  What can I say about them?  Emma shouldn’t be here, so I am magnanimously thankful for her.  Ashlyn is a spit-fire who never ceases to make us die laughing as she points her finger at us and gives us a piece of her mind in jibber-jabber.

3.      My church.  I love the people in my church, and I wouldn’t trade a single one out for someone else.  Are any of them perfect?  No.  Do we sometimes split hairs and disagree?  Uh, yeah.  But when I needed someone to pound on the gates of Heaven with prayers for my daughter, they stepped up to the plate.

4.    The rest of my family!

5.    Pumpkin Pie. Yum.

6.    Books.  I could crawl up in a hole and read for the rest of forever.

This post turned out much longer than I intended!  Thanks for reading, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S.  The family I mentioned above is still fighting a raging battle.  Please visit their website, and pray for them www.prayfornoah.com