Gratitude, Praise, and All Manner of Thanksgiving

Today you're in for a treat. I have asked a friend and fellow blogger to guest blog for The Well-Fed Spirit. In exchanging comments and following each other's blogs, we discovered that we have a lot in common. What caught my attention about her is how, no matter what may be going on in her life, she is always grateful. Since gratitude is something that I try to maintain in my own life as well as on this blog, I thought it would be fitting to have someone else give their take on its expression. If you enjoy my blog, I know you will enjoy our guest blogger. Please accept her lesson and pass it on to others.

Without further ado, may I present to you Semi True Torystellar:

I love Thanksgiving.  It is my favorite holiday.  Food, football, and family without the stress and drama that in my experience happens on Christmas over presents or whatever.   So, for me it doesn’t really get much better.  And poor Thanksgiving finds itself becoming a nominal blip on the radar screen of life.  Sort of makes me wonder if we, as a culture are so fat and happy that we are losing sight of what it is to be really thankful.  

I'm not even talking about being thankful for the big things.  For even the really simple things we should express our gratitude to God or the Universe, however you acknowledge the existence of a higher power.  Thanksgiving should remind us, not only of pilgrims and Indians as we were all taught in grade school, but of the larger message and picture.  

I could bombard you with a ton of statistics in the vein of how if you have $15 in your pocket or checking account you are better of than 92% of the world's population, but that has been done ad nasuem to the end effect of people becoming desensitized to it.  I would rather us consider something slightly different. No matter how badly you have it right now.  No matter how badly you are hurting, how deep in debt you are or how lonely you think you are; at this moment someone has it worse.  It may be hard to believe depending on your situation but I guarantee you it is true.   

In addition, when I pray or meditate on thankfulness I find myself practicing being thankful not only for the really great things in my life - my husband, my kids, my home, down comforter and puffy pillows - but also for the things that I've come through that I would rather not have had to deal with.  Heartbreak, child abuse, poverty, addictions just to name a few.  The reason that I can be thankful for the things that I would rather not deal have had to deal with is because they give me perspective.  Without the bad I couldn't appreciate the good things nearly as much as I do.   

As trite as this may seem, I would like to challenge everyone to list your ABC's of thankfulness.  I got a headstart and have been doing mine one a day since the beginning of the month.  But if you sit down I bet you can jot off a list of 26 things you are thankful for in no time at all.  They can be the really big things, family, or your home or they can be the little things like the ink in your pen or the vodka in your glass in the evenings.  You can share or not, but it's a good exercise to help keep things in perspective this season.  

Peace be with all of you.