Imperfect Thanks

Photo credit to The Artful Parent

What does it truly mean to give thanks, dear friends? It has begun to seem like such a cliche´, this "giving of thanks" we practice every year at this time. We gather with family and friends, and some of us might even go around the table asking each person for what we are thankful - and yet we have so much to be thankful for, most of us, and to limit that gratitude to one day seems perhaps the height of ingratitude.

I must admit I am like most. Some days I get so caught up in the day to day grind, the problems and issues and minutiae, that I forget all for which I am so grateful. Perhaps this is why having one day dedicated to giving thanks is so precious. Perhaps it is because it reminds us that we should be finding that gratitude every day of every year, and giving thanks on a regular basis. I try to practice this, and have tried harder this year than most of the other years I've spent on this planet - mostly because there is so much to be grateful for this year.      

Photo credit to Holding Balloons in LaLaLand

I am thankful for a husband who loves me even when I don't particularly love myself, who supports me and encourages me, and yet also helps me to stay grounded. I am thankful for my beautiful daughter, who is the centre of my world, and has been since the day she was born. I am thankful for my wonderful niece, who moved in with us this year and turned our family trio into a quartet, and a much more interesting quartet, too. I am thankful for my sisters, who have over the years become my best friends and not simply my siblings. I am thankful for in-laws and a sister-in-law who have also become my family over the years, and who long ago ceased to be nicknamed "the outlaws". I am thankful for a best friend who knows all my secrets and flaws and still chooses to be my best friend. I am thankful for a male friend who started as a friend and has become the "brother I never wanted", with all that entails. I am especially thankful to have experienced a very special reunion this year, one about which I am not ready to write but which I hold close to my heart every day, and which brought me peace and joy - and another child. I find myself surrounded by family these days, a discovery that lessens the sting of the loss of my beloved parents.

I am thankful, too, for the new adventure I began this year. It all started with this blog and went from there, at a rapid and almost dizzying pace. With the adventure came new friends and new opportunities, new ideas, and new ideals, too. I have met people, gone places, and done things I never believed I would or could do. I have climbed a mountain, both in the literal and figurative sense. I have found people that I admire, respect, and adore. I am so thankful for the chance to do all of this, for the good sense I found to seize the moment and embrace it. I am profoundly thankful that the world granted me this opportunity, and that I chose to take it. I am so thankful for all my friends who were there before this adventure began and who stuck around for the ride, cheering me on, offering words of encouragement, and sharing in both my successes and failures.

My life is not perfect, dear friends, and nor am I. In fact, perfection is not something I seek. At one time I thought perhaps that was the goal, being the perfect person. And now I am thankful to see how wrong that was, how it is imperfection that makes the world an interesting place, and how we can only try to be better, not perfect.

Photo credit to Holding Balloons in LaLaLand

My life is not perfect, but it is so very, very good. It is so very worth being thankful. So, for Thanksgiving this year I am thankful for so very much, but mostly I am thankful for the reminder to experience gratitude every day. I am thankful, dear friends, for every day and every experience and every moment. For this, dear friends, is life, the good and the bad, the easy and the hard - and I am thankful for this life, for every single second of it.

Photo credit to d.Sharp journal