Thankful Thursday

I'm grateful for the friend who brought us vegetable soup and rice yesterday. Gracias, Patricia.

I'm grateful for the huge piece of salmon my mother bought for us that I was able to cook yesterday.

I'm grateful for the abundance of delicious and healthy food that we are enjoying at the moment.

I'm grateful for the friend who came over to talk at 11 this morning and stayed until after 3:30 this afternoon.

I'm grateful for the rain. The earth is dry and thirsty.

I'm grateful for the strength to bounce on my rebounder, lift weights, and stretch when I'm done.

I'm grateful for the patience to listen to the dental hygienist brag about her vegetable garden,

the ability to laugh at the parenting stories the sonogram techician told me at the ob-gyn's office,

and the perverse joy of sharing lubricant jokes with my breast kanswer navigator.

If I've got to attend all these appointments, I may as well make the most of them, right?

I'm grateful that, even though the surgeons are having a hard time coordinating their schedules for my surgeries, soon this next step of my healing journey will be behind me. (I am planning to have a double mastectomy and a total hysterectomy done the same day. Two operations, one recovery. Apparently, finding an operating room and staffing it with these two surgeons and their two posses is not easy. Please pray that they can work it out soon, very soon.)

I'm grateful for my daughter's college friend who gifted us with a dozen of those fancy cupcakes topped with chocolate or caramel or lime slices or a miniature oreo cookies depending on the flavor. I ate half of a chocolate cupcake and dipped my finger in the frosting of three or four others. Yummy!
   
I'm grateful for the wonderful time we had at a baseball game last night. Two local high schools played, and we knew one player on each team. It was the first time in a long time that we attended a sporting event as an entire family.

I'm grateful for the time I spent with my son today, discussing topic sentences, food vocabulary in Spanish, and his upcoming trip to Florida with a friend.

I'm grateful for the gift certificate for a massage that an extremely generous friend recently gave me.
I'm even more grateful for the friend herself.

I'm grateful for the essential oils I received in the mail yesterday, some of which are already doing their magic in the room sprays and disinfectant sprays I've created. Sweet orange, eucalyptus, clove bud, and lavender oils are among my new toys.

I'm grateful for the simple purity of coconut oil and how soothing it feels on my skin.

I'm grateful for the recipes that combine baking soda, vinegar, Dr. Bronner's castile soap, hydrogen peroxide, essential oils, and water into household cleaning products that don't make me reach for a gas mask every time I use them.

I'm grateful for the earth-loving, people-honoring soul-sisters who have taught me new ways to love the earth, honor the people who live here, and create space for my soul to grow.

I'm grateful for when exposure to someone or something new awakens a long-buried bud of curiosity.

I'm grateful for stories of baby birds hatching, books released, courses completed, haikus composed, wisdom shared, love stories basked in, and other tales of the miraculous.

I'm grateful that sometimes self-pity is replaced with joy.

I'm grateful that sometimes resentment is overcome by forgiveness.

I'm grateful that sometimes my husband and the two teenagers we are raising all leave the house at the same time and I am blessed with a few blissful moments of blessed silence and solitude.

I'm grateful for every hug, every kind word, every smile, and every expression of caring that is expressed or shared in my vicinity - whether they are directed at me or not. Gentleness, kindness, love, and grace are contagious.

I'm grateful to you - whoever you are, wherever you are - for coming to this blog of mine, reading my ramblings, encouraging me to keep writing, and also sharing the good word with others.

I'm grateful that faith continues to be at the center of what keeps me upright, strong, and moving forward. And when I have fallen and I can't get up, faith is what gives me the hope to lift my heavy head and ask for assistance in getting back up.

I'm grateful for the way in which Glennon worded a truth that I have believed and lived by for most of my life: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, all is well.