Thanksgiving

It’s been my favorite American holiday since as long as I can remember. As a kid, my favorite food in the world was pumpkin pie (it still is, I might add), so that’s probably why I loved Thanksgiving so much when I was younger. That and it was perfectly acceptable for me to completely smother my slice of pie in whipped cream on that day…

As I got older, though, things changed. Money was short and we couldn’t really afford your typical Thanksgiving dinner. At first, I struggled a lot with not complaining about this… I mean, how can Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving without the turkey, the green bean casserole, THE PUMPKIN PIE?!?!

Every year, about when November hits, I get pretty depressed. Business slows down, customers stop ordering from us for a few months because of the holidays. Every day leading up to Thanksgiving just gets worse and worse, and I start to lose hope.

The reason I love Thanksgiving so much, now, isn’t because of the good food. It isn’t because of the history, or the perfect weather. It’s because it’s the day that slaps me in the face and tells me to stop complaining. The day that gets me thinking and focusing on what I do have, thinking of things to be thankful for. It reminds me of just how much I love my life. As surprising as it seems at times, it actually doesn’t require too much work to find things for which to be thankful.

This year, for the first time in a long time, I’m thankful for my life. God’s blessed me with people who have given me reasons to keep on living, and reminded me of reasons I couldn’t see.  He’s given me love. He placed someone in particular in my life who has shown me that I am not altogether expendable. He’s shown me who my real friends are, and gently warned me when I was getting involved with those who weren’t. He’s been there with me every step I’ve taken, even the steps that took me off-course. He never failed to remind me when I was going the wrong way, even if it meant I had to fall flat on my face.

I’m thankful for my amazing family. We’ve been through a lot of crappy stuff together, and I could have sworn we’d be torn apart by now. But we continue to try, and that alone is something for which to be thankful. My family loves each other enough to stick together even when we don’t want to. I’m truly blessed to have them.

I’m thankful for my friends. God’s blessed me with understanding, forgiving people who I can honestly feel safe with. They don’t care about my past or my mistakes, and they care enough about me to let me know what I’m doing wrong. They remind me every day that I am blessed, and I truly am.

I’m even thankful for my not-friends. The people who have taken advantage of me, who have talked about me behind my back, etc. I’m thankful for them because, if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have learned how to love. How to forgive, how to be patient, how to look past the ugly and find the good.

Over all, I truly am thankful for everything- the worst and the best, and that which is in between. I'm as thankful for the obvious blessings as I am for the trials. God knows what He's doing with my life, and I'm thankful that I know this and can trust Him to lead me in the best possible direction for my life.

I’m thankful for the happiness God continues to renew in my spirit every day, even in the night when the stars aren’t shining brightly enough to see.

Oh, and I'm also incredibly thankful that I have never had a turkey-less Thanksgiving. One way or another, God's always spoiled us with one. I can just picture the huge grin on His face when we find out at the last minute that we can somehow afford to have our favorites on the table. (:

x♥x

"I'm Alive, I'm Alive, I'm Alive, I'm Alive" ....

    Lately, I’ve felt the need to write about my childhood. I’m not sure why… It’s just been a matter on my heart.

    The first time I got this feeling, I thought, “Oh, yeah. My childhood. That’ll be easy.” I figured I’d pick up a pencil, jot down a few things, and that’d be that. Well, I picked up my pencil… and nothing came. That’s not to say I don’t remember my childhood. I’ve been told that I have a uniquely good memory. In other words, I remember essentially everything that’s happened in my past. I remember things that no one has reminded me of, like Trevor and I playing with a red RC car in my grandmother’s apartment’s parking lot when I was, like, four years old. I remember going swimming with my dad in the pool at one of the apartment complexes in which I lived in Oregon, when I was not even two. I remember the day Trevor was born, getting to see him for the first time.

    The point is, I remember events really well. As big or as small as it is, I’ll usually remember it.

     So anyway, today, my mom was doing some cleaning, getting ready for a consultation with a customer, and she put in a Passion cd from, like, the late 90s. Blast. From the. Past. I knew every song on the cd, since we used to sing them all back in early JoL days. Song after song, I was overcome by the nostalgia. “You Alone” started playing, and I laughed, as I do every time I hear it. The bridge of the song is just singing “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive” no less than 16 times. As if that’s not ridiculous enough, it doesn’t even sound like “I’m alive”… Instead you have a whole bunch of people sounding like they’re singing, “I’m a lime, I’m a lime, I’m a lime, I’m a lime”.

    And that’s when it hit me… What makes it hard for me to write about my childhood, is that I can’t remember my emotion associated with the event. I remember doing things, and I assume I must have been happy, but I can’t remember actually being happy… Until today. Listening to “You Alone”, I remembered how happy I was when I was little. How happy my family was. Things didn’t always go right. My dad was rarely around because of work. The only times I got to see him were Wednesday nights, Thursday nights(which later became Tuesday nights), and Sundays. School was horrible… I was the target of bullying in my first and second grade classes. There were times when my family didn’t have a car, and when we did, AC was a rare thing for us. But despite everything, we were blessed, and we were happy.

    Remembering what it was like to be happy is one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced in a while. It’s been so long since I could honestly say that I’m happy. I’ve been excited, passionate, etc. But happy? Okay, so I’ve been happy over certain things. But as a stable emotion that I feel, it just hasn’t been there. Don’t ask me what has been there, I don’t even know. I do know that it hasn’t been happiness, though.

    It’s in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness-”.

    So now I’m just asking myself… I have the right to pursue happiness… what have I been doing? Why haven’t I taken advantage of this?

    I don’t have to be afraid. I don’t have to be sad, depressed, angry, bipolar. My God created me to be joyful in His presence, that I would have inexplicable joy and that I could live my life without letting ANYTHING affect my happiness.

    So here’s to finally exercising my right to pursuing happiness, to reviving the care-free, joyful girl of my childhood, and to the start of a new blog dedicated to the happiness of my past, present, and future. And, above all, to an amazing God who wants nothing short of joy for me.

x♥x