Can you believe it is almost Thanksgiving? Wasn’t the 4th of July just the day before yesterday.
Alas, my calendar says the fourth Thursday in November is tomorrow.
We will probably have a couple of observances this year. My first cousin, Brandi, is to host the annual Deal gathering. Mama’s family hasn’t decided about their gathering just yet. My sister and brother might have other obligations, so it may be just me and my folks at the table.
I have offered to cook. My Thanksgiving culinary skills are roughly evenly matched with Snoopy® of Peanuts® cartoon fame. You remember, don’t you? He cooked a delicious feast of popcorn and toast. Even I can manage that.
And, I’m thankful for it.
Thanksgiving is like that, you see. We can be thankful and content with whatever we have. We live in a land of plenty and in the most blessed nation on earth. Don’t you let the self-serving politicians or the opinionated, full of gas blowhards on the opinion shows on the so-called news channels tell you otherwise.
Our worst day in America is as good as it ever gets in many places in the world.
It is profound to think that America’s very first official Thanksgiving observance was declared by President Abraham Lincoln amidst the carnage of the Civil War. It is a reminder that we don’t really know how thankful we ought to be.
With the arrival of the holiday, I always like to think about the things I am thankful for.
A few years ago, our pastor mentioned an exercise in one of his sermons I think is a good idea for us all. He encouraged us to take a sheet of paper and write down our troubles and on another sheet write down our blessings. If we are honest with ourselves, the blessings sheet is a lot longer. It was that case with me. I think it helps us to focus on how much we are really blessed.
Here are some things I am thankful for:
• I am thankful to a gracious and loving God Who is so very good to me, in spite of myself.
• I am thankful for the little church I serve and for the privilege to live in a country where I have the freedom to worship as I please. The folks there are very good to me.
• I am thankful for my family - mama and daddy, my sister and her husband, my baby brother and my niece and nephew.
• I am thankful for sweet and precious memories - how they linger. I am privileged to have known all of my grandparents except one - my maternal grandfather. I was privileged for a time to be able to work in an area where people still remembered him and told me stories of him. I was especially blessed to know my Grandma Jones and my Grandma and Granddaddy Deal. For a little while, I was also privileged to have my great-grandmother, Anna Tyre Rogers.
• I am thankful to live in a good community and to also work in one.
• I am thankful for good health. I have had a health issue recently. Thankfully, I feel much better. I can honestly say that it is good to be able to actually eat again. There was a time when that was not the case. I’ll have more to say about that in a future column.
• I am thankful for my boss, who pays me for something I love to do. I am also thankful for all of my co-workers for putting up with me.
• I am thankful for all those people who help me keep up with everything. They include all the various boards, elected officials, support staff and my sources. I can’t name them all for fear of leaving them out, but they know who they are.
• I am thankful for my friends. Believe it or not, I have one or two. I am especially thankful for the one over on Johnson Street. They have been a blessing and I appreciate their contributions to my life.
I am thankful for all the things I don’t have that I wouldn’t want. Think about that one for a few minutes. It’s deep.
These are but a few things that I am thankful for and it’s just the beginning of the list.
Happy Thanksgiving!
• Jason Deal is the news editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected].
