Remembering Thanksgiving, Week #1

 It has been pointed out by many people that anymore we just skip from Halloween to Christmas and barely acknowledge Thanksgiving. We definitely don't give the day its due anymore. Too many stores have started opening on Thanksgiving to get a jump on Black Friday. Part of the problem may be that even though Christmas is a Christian holiday, it has been secularized to the point that only hardcore atheists are offended by it. Thanksgiving, however, cannot really be secularized. A day of thanks infers there is Someone to be thankful to, so that may be part of the reason Thanksgiving gets skimmed past.

  Also, we live in such an entitlement society here in America. Too many people aren't thankful for what they have. They want more, they feel they deserve more. They will never be happy with what they have, nor feel any sense of thankfulness for what they have.

  We should be thankful every day for what we have, but Thanksgiving Day has been set aside as a day to specifically be thankful for the blessings in our lives. I like and need to focus on that for the whole month of November, and other years I have done a blog post every day of the month of November for something I was thankful for. That is too many blog posts for one month, especially when I usually do several others. Also, I feel obligated to do one per day and it isn't always easy to get it done.

  So this year, I am going to do one per month and list a few things I am thankful for in each post. I'll have a week to do it in whatever day works. So for week #1 of November 2015:

1) I am thankful for salvation, God's love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. It is sad it has taken me almost my entire life to this point to grasp the belief that God loves me, but I finally got there. I am also finally understanding the depths of His grace and how patient He is with me, although no one can truly understand the depths of His love and grace in this life. But I can still be thankful for all of that, and I am.

2) I am thankful for my family. We aren't perfect, but we all get along and enjoy spending time with each other, which can't be said of a lot of families. Though I'll never have children of my own, I am blessed to be uncle to 3 nieces and 3 nephews whose lives I am a big part of.

3) I am thankful for my sense of humor. Yeah, a lot of people groan when I tell jokes, but I am thankful I have a good sense of humor. It has helped to keep me sane, and has been there even in my worst times of depression.

4) I am thankful for friends. There was a day I felt I had no friends. No one at school liked me and I was picked on and bullied. To this day, I have trouble believing people actually like me and want to be around me, but I actually have some who do. Unfortunately, it seems those who most want to be around me don't live close by.....but I have a lot of people I count as friends, and I am very thankful for them.