Thanksgiving Thanks

It is Thanksgiving week and we have been preparing for a family gathering here at our home.  Every other year the kids, in-laws, and grandchildren come home for food, fellowship, football, and some fun games of cribbage and more.  Five families come from 1-3 days and we celebrate a mini Christmas at the same time.  This year they may take in a movie.....as the grands age, the activities change, as they should.  We are enjoying these gatherings as long as we can. Treasured memories.

We have so much to be thankful for.  Our health, our family, our friends, our home.  And when was the last time any of us went hungry?  Our bounty is a great blessing from our Lord!  We pray each of you have someone to hug and share a meal with this Thanksgiving.  We pray your day, your lives are filled with abundance.  An abundance of love, peace, joy, hope, forgiveness.  An abundance of health, home, family, friends, and food.

As I watch it rain today, the weather took me back to our first Thanksgiving in the Philippine Islands.  It was typhoon season and we experienced 7 typhoons in just 2 1/2 weeks.  Joel was a meteorologist for the US Air Force so weather was his specialty.  You know when a typhoon is coming, so everyone prepares as best they can.  Extra water from the base water stations, food you can eat without cooking, candles, etc.  Thanksgiving day we had a nasty typhoon arrive,  At the same time Joel forgot to have our propane tank filled, so we ended up eating potato chips, Lime Pear Salad, and fruit salad for dinner......and just the outer layer of the turkey, the rest did not cook since the tank ran dry. The electricity went out and did not come back for 3 days and nights.  Our home was made from cement blocks that had been filled with wet cement....that house was not going anywhere and we felt pretty safe inside, even though our neighbor's home lost their roof.   We did have to stand at the doors and push water back outside as it poured in under the doors like someone was holding a hose under it.  Joel had to head in to work later that afternoon, but we had a good time that Thanksgiving Day and enjoyed our chips, salads, and pie!  We most likely had a good cry too, since we were so far away from extended family.  There were no cell phones at that time and it was expensive to get on a base connected phone. That day we celebrated with our little family at the time ~Bethany, Matt, and our maid Amphy.

We have so other Thanksgiving memories too.  Mostly great, a few not so great, but that Filipino Thanksgiving was quite the adventure for us.

Which brings me back to what we are thankful for.  Joel and I are so grateful for each other.  God has blessed us with 48 years of Thanksgiving celebrations together, give or take a few when he had to be absent from home.  We praise God for an abundance of all that blesses our lives.  Family, friends, homes, health, and food.  Now thank we all our God!