Gratitude

Probably like nearly everyone, at least everyone in the States, I’ve been reading and hearing of people’s gratitude.  After all we’ve just experienced a holiday based around gorging ourselves on food, watching sports on over-sized TVs, and subtle family tension that too often blows up straight into conflict.  (Though not in my family, so yay us.)

Because I’m snarky and mean, I’ll admit to having laughed at a few of those gratitude posts.

But, despite being both snarky and mean, there are a lot of things I’m grateful for.  Like, you know, truly, deeply grateful for.

Anyway you look at it, no matter the level of our poverty, I am grateful to be an American. Mostly because we are stupidly spoiled as a country.  We aren’t in Darfur experiencing genocide.  Clean water comes straight from my tap and most likely from yours if you live in the states.  My Health Insurance, though crap, is health insurance, and I can go to the doctor no problem.  In fact, I can go to a doctor think he’s a jerk and go to another.  I can be PICKY about my doctor or my dentist or my dog walker or my babysitter.

I AM picky about my food, where it comes from, how its put together, the chemicals inside.  And though I cringe at the food bill sometimes, I’m so grateful to have an abundance of food.  Of grocery stores where lovely apples are waiting for me, where I can buy organic milk, and grass-fed beef, and Dr. Pepper.

Yes.  I see the irony.  Leave me alone.

But hey, my cow was happy before it was slaughtered.  We visited the farm.

**shut up your snarky thoughts**

I am grateful for my family.  Yes, my thoughts of family were triggered by my dogs, but whatever…  I have a lovely wonderful father and mother.  My sister is my best friend.  I have four brothers whom I love though their jerk level varies.  (Tee hee to you.)  And I have a lovely foster daughter and foster son whose very presence in my life is a joy tinged in horror.  (It isn’t as bad as it sounds.  I just love them and wish they WERE mine.)  And, I have two lovely dogs, presents from a mostly lovely brother, who sleep on my head, lick too much, got diarrhea from toddler food and forgot their potty training and make me so very, very happy.

And I’m grateful for my religion.  I am grateful for my belief in God as a Heavenly Father who loves me individually.  And, I love Him.  I know there are many in my life who don’t believe in God, but He brings hope to my life, and I am grateful to have faith in Him.   And I am, again, grateful to live in a country where I can have faith in what I choose.

And a post of gratitude can not be completed without saying that I am grateful for my friends.  There was a time in my life when I literally had no friends outside of my family.  So, to have an abundance of friends now, lovely people whose thoughts, actions, and presence enriches my life is a joy that I may not have appreciated to the level I do now without having experienced so long without friends.

This has been the hardest year of my life.  Preceded by the hardest year of my life before this one and the hardest before that one.  It’s been a rough few years.  Yet without my friends, family, dogs, and faith, I wouldn’t be the totally crazy, full of hope, wreck that I am now.

So, thank you world for giving me all that I have including all the blessings I am not wise enough to see.

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