Thankfulness

While this has been a life changing and incredibly difficult year, I still have many, many things to be thankful for.  I am beyond thankful for the incredible love and support from my parents, Scott’s parents, Scott’s sisters, and our extended families.  I’m not sure how Jaelyn and I would have gotten through the last couple of months without our family and friends.  So many people have prayed for us, provided meals, sent cards, shared words of encouragement, shared listening ears, helped with lawn care, etc.  We have truly felt so cared for. 

I am thankful for the love, support and prayers from our church family.  At times I have been in awe of the strength that God has given us in this difficult time.  I know that the prayers that have been and continue to go up on our behalf is where that strength has come from.  The words or cards of encouragement always seem to come at the moments when I need them the most and give me the strength to keep going.

I am thankful for Jaelyn.  She is an amazing little girl.  Jaelyn is very insightful and has an amazing depth of spirit unusual for a child her age.  She is very compassionate and very determined.   Jaelyn has her ups and downs in her grief journey.  Yet I am very proud of how she is finding her way through.  Jaelyn has found positive ways to express her grief and is becoming much better at being in tune to what she is feeling.  I am thankful that she continues to feel comfortable talking about with me and journaling.  I truly believe that God is going to use these experiences to allow Jaelyn to help someone else.

As I have said many times, I am thankful for Scott planning for the future.  This has allowed me to focus on us and not worry about being able to pay bills, etc.  I truly see God’s hand in taking care of us.  When I look back over the years that Scott and I were married, I see God’s hands in every decision that we made and how it affected where we are right now.   Especially over the past year I can see God’s hands in everything.  The push to get family pictures taken with Scott’s family is one of the seemingly small decisions that we made.  We pushed for this because our nephew was leaving for college and knew that it might be difficult to get everyone together again.  Little did we know how precious those pictures would be to us just 8 weeks later, after Scott died.   I am thankful for a comfortable home to live in, food on the table, paid bills, a reliable vehicle to drive, and a good job with wonderful co-workers.   

I am thankful for the thirteen plus years of marriage to Scott.  We were able to travel to many different places around this country with various friends.  We had a lot of fun together.  We were able to work together as houseparents at Milton Hershey School for 4 ½ years with middle school girls.  We were able to spend lots of time with family and friends.  We were able to help others.  While we had our ups and downs, I truly am thankful for every moment that we had together.  I only wish that we would have had another forty or more years together.

Thankfulness comes from a focus on what God has given me, not what I have lost or not been given.  A truly thankful spirit takes work.  It is not always easy to see what God has given me, sometimes my focus is on what I have lost or won’t have.  Sometimes God uses other people’s lives, sometimes Jaelyn’s insightful words, and sometimes words of encouragement from friends to draw my focus back to thankfulness for what God has given.