One of my favorite things to do during Thanksgiving Week is to take the time to make a gratitude list. This is when I contemplate my appreciation for my wonderful Husband, Family, Faith, Friendships, and Freedom.
This year however, there were many “new items” on my list….things like oxygen, the body’s immune system, the capacity for the body to heal and repair itself, the ability to read, the Miracle of Movement, wheelchairs & handicapped ramps, the optic nerve, healthy brains, standing on 2 legs, walking without pain, and of course the loving care of so many kind and generous people.
Much of my 2021 list reflects the lessons that I learned when an accident left me seriously concussed and temporarily confined to a wheelchair. During this time, my eyes were opened to so many parts of life that I had previously taken for granted. Everyday activities like breathing, thinking, standing and walking suddenly moved into the category of gifts! Often I would think of the Joni Mitchell lyrics, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” and realize that gratitude can flow from the other side of loss!
So now, during this Thanksgiving Season, my recent lessons of gratitude continue to echo in my mind. They remind me that the depth of my thanks is not relevant to “how much” I have to be thankful for, but rather to the amount of appreciation that I offer for all of the unnamed and unnoticed gifts that life has so generously bestowed on each of us.
And so with this in mind, I hope that you each had a very HAPPY and GRATEFUL THANKSGIVING!!!