A Grateful Heart and the Friends Who Fill It Up

It’s taken me the entire month to sit down and write a blog to celebrate the season of Thanksgiving.  It’s not because I don’t have blessings to be grateful for, for there are many and I recognize and have a grateful heart for all of them.  

Sometimes I’d sit down and start to write and ten minutes later realized I was still staring at a blank screen because I didn’t seem to have anything to say.  Other times I would sit down to write and I would have a hard time pulling up the feelings of gratitude that I knew were there but seemed to be playing a game of hide and seek in my heart.  Sometimes I was ready to write but had too much homework and had to play at being responsible.

I am blessed.  I am blessed to be a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.  I am blessed to be able to go to school.  I am blessed to have three beautiful children who grew under my heart in love.  I am blessed to be able to live in country where I enjoy the freedoms that I do.  I am blessed with good health and I am blessed with the knowledge that there is a God in the heavens and that He knows and loves me.

So, where are my thoughts most wandering off to right now?  I am feeling overwhelming gratitude for my friends.

I’m a bit of a contrast.  On one hand, I can be the life of the party when I am comfortable with people I know.  On the other hand, it takes me some time to develop close, intimate friendships.  When I do however, they mean a great deal to me and there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do for those I love and care about. 

I am thankful in particular for my friends I have made since I’ve been single.  I don’t believe there will ever be another group of people I will associate with in my lifetime that I will have learned more from and laughed with as much as I have.  There is something fundamental that changes within you when you lose a spouse due to divorce or an untimely and premature death, and it is only those who have experienced a similar situation who can understand just how that looks and feels for ourselves and our children.

You truly learn to mourn with those who mourn and suffer with those who suffer.  If we are blessed enough, we have the opportunity to help carry one another’s burdens when at times our own seem almost too heavy to bear.

 

My life is what it is.  I’m not going to cry over spilled lemonade. Well, okay, some nights I do…..but on a whole I can truly say my life has been so blessed and enriched by the road I found my feet set on, and by the people I have met, and by the friends I have made along the way.

I am thankful for the laughter…..is it that my single friends would have always been just as funny as they are if they weren't single, or is there something about loss that forces you to find joy and laughter in the funniest things and sometimes the oddest places?  Thank you for laughing with me. 

Thank you.  Thank you for supporting me, for listening to me, for encouraging me, for crying with me, for loving me.  Thank you for blessing my life in untold ways. 

Thank you my friends, single and married, for being my angels on earth.

Happy Thanksgiving.