Thankful Thursday

Yesterday when I was driving home from getting more fabric, the road had just been resurfaced, making driving so easy, so calming actually. As I thought about how grateful I was for this black winding ribbon of a road, with the bright yellow stripe running down the middle, I felt flooded with thankfulness for my life, for the amount of love I experience each and every day from family and friends, and the tender care Emery shows me...he has the perfect amount of watching over me. Not too protective, he knows I am not made of glass and I would feel insulted to be treated that way, but yet he is my protector, my knight in shining armour. He just doesn't suffocate me ! I am not the kind of woman that needs my hand held every moment of the day as you might imagine. Never saw the Proverbs 31 woman in that light either. She buys real estate on her own and governs the house, makes decisions that makes her husband look good !

Anyway that is another subject....I was talking about feeling so thankful, so back to that.

I am thankful that Emery wants me to call him when I get home, so he knows I am safe and he will call me on the cell if I am out longer than planned. I like that.

I felt in that moment on that smooth new road, such profound joy and thankfulness for the small things in my life as well as the major things. The way the sun shines down our hallway in September, which reminds Emery and I of how the sun shone down the hallway of the hospital we worked at when we met, we would look around and if no one else was in the area, we would hold hands while walking down that hallway, and that same kind of love still exists for us and I am thankful for that. I am thankful for the way my children want to talk to me, and want to share things with me and enjoy our company. I am thankful they understand now as adults that we tried our hardest to be good parents. I am thankful for this house, and how it is something beyond wood and nails. It is so full of who we are. It is the place where even when no one else is home, you can feel love, you can sense so much of the past and imagine the future. I smile just thinking of how the dinning room will seem too small in a few years and children will end up sitting at the "children's table" in the kitchen, just like I grew up doing, sitting on folding chairs and feeling like the grown ups have it made. Often times when I was a child, the table for us was an unused door brought up from the cellar and spread with a table cloth. You hoped you didn't have to sit just where the door knob would be sticking up like some great mound, reminding you that the table was a door.

I felt so thankful for the way there is peace in our home. No fighting or bickering. No hurt feelings of unspoken emotions that brew into monsters. No angry silence either. There is lots of laughter though. I felt thankful for the way the house smells, now that might seem silly but I have a very sensitive nose and just love good smelling things. I think God must be that way too, since He created flowers and incense to be offered in His Holy Temple. Good smells improve my mood. I love good smells coming from the kitchen, or laugh when Melissa gets a package from us and her first comment is, "mom, when I opened the box it smelled like home" and its a good thing. I felt flooded with thankfulness the entire way home on this winding country road. Thankful that I don't live in some big city, thankful for seeing hay being baled. Thankful for my health and well being. Thankful for the way long skirts make me feel a bit old fashioned and that I never feel so rushed in life that impatience grows at red lights or delays. That long lines don't steal my peace of mind.

I felt so thankful for those dear grand-babies and the joy they bring. Just a mention of those wee ones makes me smile and feel so filled with love for them.

I could go on and on about the things I felt on this 6 miles of road, but chores need to be done and there is sewing waiting for me after that. Some baking too.

Thankfulness is in itself something to be thankful for ! And something else, at this point in my life, I can look back on all the really hard things I have dealt with and be thankful for them, for what they have given me. They have given me understanding and honest sympathy and built strength.