Thanksgiving

Each year, America dedicates a whole day to being grateful and celebrating Thanksgiving.  Though, it mostly feels like we have started to skip this day and move straight to Christmas!  I have always appreciated Thanksgiving more so than Christmas because there’s much less fanfare, less distraction and the simplicity of it makes it easy to remember its purpose.  Giving Thanks.

This month in my daily devotional, the theme has been focusing on being grateful, even in the midst of a storm.  Having this thankful heart, opens your heart to bigger possibilities and opportunities for beautiful things to happen.  Going through a difficult circumstance SHOULD make you appreciate life in all it’s fragility.  We all know life can literally change in a moment.  That reality has gripped us for four years.

I have wayyyy too long a list for me to share with you everything I am grateful for.  And I do my very best to thank God each day for all the blessings.  I don’t know that my heart could ever THANK God for what we all have endured for Elena, but I for sure am able to THANK Him for the innumerable amount of wonderful things that have happened as a result.  Our home in a wonderful community.  Elena’s school.  Our church.  Our new friends.  Our changed hearts.  Our scars that have strengthened us.   Our beautiful girl who is alive!

This Thanksgiving Day, I want to encourage you all to, despite your present circumstances, take a second to absorb the beauty that is your life and be thankful.  My devotion this morning said “In our broken world, blessings and sorrows intermingle freely”.  How true this is.  Today, don’t let our sorrows and difficulties render us bitter.  Let’s open our heart and be thankful.

When I was in my darkest place of grief after Elena’s injury, when everything was dark and impossible, I always remember there being the tiniest prick of light.  I held onto that for dear life.  Now I know that was the hope God had promised to never leave me and to get me through that impossible storm.  The light surrounds our family now, no longer just a prick.  It’s our shining light, and it comes through Elena.  Our family photographer took this picture of Elena about a month ago.  It is perfection.  The light that day, only shown on Elena and only for a brief moment.