This Thanksgiving: Bad Things/Good Things

To be honest, this year has really sucked. Every now and then you get a year in which bad things happen. 2008 has been filled with too many people I know, both family and friends and clients, answering the Lord’s call to go home to heaven. I have attended more funerals this year than the past five years combined. My 89 year old mother has been ill for the past 3 months, and she has been difficult to handle causing major disruptions in our lives. My son entered graduate school at Ohio State, giving us a bad case of empty nest syndrome.

Then there was the energy crisis of this past spring and summer when we couldn’t afford gasoline and the cost of food almost kicked into hyperinflation. Now there is the nation’s financial crisis and we can’t afford to buy anything as the nation’s iconic corporations are on the ropes and have either gone under or are about to. For some of us, our retirement funds are in shambles. For others, entire livelihoods are gone.

In politics, my political party deep sixed the election by first nominating someone for president who really should not have run…and his campaign confirmed it. Ouch!!!

And this past week, an acquaintance/friend of mine and his family have begun a journey through some very difficult and disruptive circumstances, the type of which no one should have to go through. In a setting that should be one of love and hope, ugliness and the very worst side of human nature has reared its ugly head causing distress to many people.

My wife and I both lead very active lives independent of each other. But every Friday night we come together to have dinner, just the two of us, and talk over the week’s events in our lives. This past Friday we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary, and as we sat across the high top table in our club’s bar eating dinner, hashing over all sorts of things, it was clear that I am truly blessed.

I am blessed with my beautiful wife who has stuck with me for all of those years through some very trying circumstances. I am blessed with a great son, who makes me proud every day. I am blessed with terrific friends, who tolerate my idiosyncrasies more than they should. I belong to wonderful organizations that do good for others and provide creative outlets for what little talent I have to offer. I have been blessed with more good health than I deserve given my grossly “less than healthy” lifestyle. I am blessed with a brain that can at least make some feeble effort to “get through things.”

I am blessed to live in a country that, with all of its faults, continually tries to achieve its idealistic goals of freedom and equality. It offers more opportunity to individuals than any other country in the world. I am blessed by those who offer their service to the military to protect our country, and are willing to die for our country. I am blessed that even in times of stress, our country still has the resources to help those out with less than me. Even in the worst of times, we are better than most, and those of us fortunate enough to live here, can keep good humor as to what is going on around us.

We are all blessed with an abundance of stuff, more stuff than we can use in a lifetime, stuff we can’t take with us when we die. We are all blessed with cable television, computers, the internet, automobiles, adequate housing, ample clothing, big screen televisions, radios, MP3 players, heat and air conditioning, running water and sewers, refrigeration, telephones, both wired and wireless. It is the things we take for granted that truly make us blessed.

So this Thanksgiving, remember that even when life sucks…it is good, and be truly grateful for the blessings that God has chosen to bestow upon us, our families, and our nation.