Givingthanks

I got to thinking, last week, about how Thanksgiving was coming up and it was a time to figure out what the heck I was thankful for. I imagined sitting at the table and going around naming stuff I’m glad to have. Of course, without even having to try, I immediately thought of my amazing family, my friends, my health, my education, a roof over my head, and God. But as I sat there in my house alone, heavily procrastinating on my research paper, I got to thinking…

It is expected to be thankful for those things. It’s easy. What about being thankful for the things we hate? I had the house to myself for a week or so as my roommates went home early for the holiday.  It hit me as I was making a pot of coffee one evening that I was living my dream. As a child, I spent hour upon hour fantasizing about one day having my own place to live. I cleaned my bedroom and pretended it was my home, and suddenly the cleaning wasn’t so bad. At least once a day my siblings and I would set the kitchen up to be a grocery store where we would shop with cardboard boxes as shopping carts, piling green bean can after bread loaf into the paper bags. Then we would load it all into the car, pretend to drive “home,” (buckling in, yelling at the “kids” in the back, playing with the radio…the whole bit) and eventually put it all right back, after we turned the “store” back into our kitchen. It was thrilling to feel like a grown up; someone who got their own groceries and drove their own car to their own house.

Now I add water to my conditioner just to avoid the store one more day.

I hate getting into my car and going to the store, I hate cleaning the house and paying rent. But this is it. What happened to that excitement for independence, for being grown up? It could mean that reality is just a tad grimmer then imagination, but I think it means I haven’t been thankful enough. No matter how old I am, I should still be thankful to be on my own and living how I choose. This is the life I am making for myself and God is helping to mold it every day, and for that, I give thanks because merely being thankful isn't enough. There are so many days that I feel the weight of the stressful world and I wish I were a child again. But all I wished for, then, was to be here. But I am here. And I am thankful for it.

I am thankful for my dented, door-leaking, way too many miles- car. I am thankful for my house that takes an entire day to clean. I am thankful for my “dead end” job that works me to death, and all of those bad shifts that reassure me getting a career is a good idea. I am thankful for my own money to buy my own groceries. I am thankful for student loans that are putting me in debt. I am thankful for church that comes way too early. I am thankful that God will still let me complain. I am thankful for my independence, integrity, upbringing, and my life—even at its worst. I am thankful to be alive, and for all of those awful moments that remind me I’m still alive.