Thanksgiving.

The giving of thanks.

On a day we set aside specifically for the purpose of giving thanks, I am struck by the fact that I should be doing this every day. I hope i AM doing this every day. Thanking the One who has provided for me that which I truly need – a house, food, and my family all together, “healthy” and at home. God is good. He is oh so good.

You may think after the year we have had that it would be hard for me to say that but I promise you that the trials and dark times have served only to make it EASIER to say those words because i have tasted their truth. It tasted a little bitter at times and not like something I would ever choose to drink but the truth of them has remained with me.

So on the day of Giving Thanks, I am so very grateful – for life. For breath. For warmth on cold days and coolness on the hot ones. The ebb and flow of seasons. For doctors who listen and doctors who keep seeking answers. For nurses who lovingly care for broken little bodies, and nurses who care also for crazy mommas. For teachers and therapists and neighbors and friends and amazing people who you don’t even know but who keep your family going.

The depth and breadth of my gratitude this year could fill a book. And still I would leave someone or something out.

I cannot capture it with words, so my hope is that I can find a way to capture it with actions. To give back. To give forward. To pay back a debt I can never repay. To tell of the glorious wonders of our Lord and Savior – in the good times and in the bad times.

I posted this picture on Kendall’s page because I felt like it summed up my thankfulness this year.

It was the moment after the breathing tube came out in August, after three weeks of the worst illness i have ever seen her fight back from.  It was the first time in her life I had ever witnessed her take that first breath on her own. She did not take it in my arms at birth – she was whisked away from me immediately. She was intubated and extubated in the NICU and I was not there. In May when she extubated it was Ben who was with her while I was home with the big girls. But that day – that most important of days, when we all held our breath hoping she could and would take her own – I was there. The amazing doctor who had had to make the choice to intubate her before was the one there while we extubated her this time. He put his hand on my shoulder while the tube was removed, and she coughed, and she breathed, and with tears in his own voice he told me “Good job mom. she did it.”
and then I fell on my baby girl crying tears of release, of joy, of gratitude unlike any I have ever felt before. One of our amazing nurses grabbed my phone from the bedside table and took this picture, knowing without being told that I would want this picture to hold on to.

I wrote this post in May to attempt to say thank you to the team who had gotten Kendall through that first life-threatening infection. And it still holds true today.

So very very much to be thankful for. God please let me live up to all that you have blessed us with this year. May I never stop telling of your amazing glory in the life of my child, in the lives of our family.

I am just so thankful.

My hope and prayer for each of you is that you know what thankfulness is too – that you understand where your blessings are, and where they have come from. Live in thankfulness, my friends. It is an amazing place to be.

 

terra.