Thursday! 3-3: Thankful, Schmankful.

V3, I3

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It is hard for me to be thankful right now. My Dad is in a hospital an hour away, awaiting a procedure that the doctors are confident will go off without a hitch, but you know how those things go. This is his second hospital of the week. The first hospital was all set to do the “procedure” he needed done¹ but then they weren’t, so they sent him to the hospital where he is now. Once he got there, they started their evaluation pretty much from the beginning. It is, from what I’m told, going well. He is happy, looking and feeling better than he has in many days, my Mom tells us. I can’t see him easily because of the hospital’s rather strict visitor policy.

The whole episode has caused…some stress. I am not great right now, which is why I’m not giving you splendid creativity advice or sharing a wonderful poem I wrote recently. My heart doesn’t hold any wonderful poetry right now and my head is full, for reasons I won’t spell out here, of rather loud and persistent self-criticism.

It is hard to be thankful, yet I am. My wife hasn’t thrown me out of the house for being a miserable, and often brittle, jerk. My friends haven’t abandoned me. In fact, they check in on me to make sure I’m still above water. My church family — at least those whom I’ve gotten to know in the last few months — have encircled my wife and I with genuine caring and offers of assistance. I have a place to live that isn’t flooded, as it was at very nearly this time last year. My car runs well and I can still afford gas and food and heat. Though I am not writing now, I still can write. My mind is not more dull than usual and my heart isn’t closed to the beauty of God’s own creation. Even though our regular smallish family gathering² won’t happen this year as it usually does, it’ll happen some time later in some form. I’m sure it’ll be fine when it does.

After all, what is most important about Thanksgiving is not the specific day set apart by President Lincoln in 1863³ but the special importance we place on the simple but often forgotten act of gratitude. I won’t go into how often I forget to be grateful for the simple but extraordinary blessings in my life, but “often” is not quite adequate to hold the number. I forget. You do too, most likely. That’s life. That’s how it is. Thankfulness isn’t automatic. That is why we have a day to gather and remember. That is why we need to make it a habit and reinforce that habit as ruthlessly as we cut bad habits out of our lives.

Anyhow, it’s hard for me to be thankful right now, but I am. I’m thankful for everything I mentioned before and I’m thankful for you. Right there. Reading this right now. Thank you and have a very happy Thanksgiving Day.

1. Not to be too gross, but he had an issue where he was leaking blood faster than his body could replace it. That caused a bunch of blood pressure and quivery heart issues. The “procedure” will remove the thing causing the blood loss and all will be well.

2. I do not have a smallish family by any measure. Most of them live out of town or do things with their own local families. We gather with my parents and perhaps one of my sisters and some nieces and/or nephews. Mostly, though, it’s just my wife, my Mom and Pop, and me.

3. The fourth Thursday in November. FDR, heavy-handed meddler that he was, shifted Thanksgiving officially to the third Thursday of the month, so people could spend more they very much did not have toward the “end” of the Great Depression. Congress moved it back to where Lincoln put it, permanently, in 1941.