Especially Thankful Thursday

I am thankful every Thursday whether or not I write a post here. In fact, I am thankful every day. I am thankful for every day, every hour, every moment that I am alive and active in the world.
But I am especially thankful on Thursdays.

I am thankful for the rising of the sun.
I am thankful for sunsets.
I am thankful for the beauty that begins and ends each day
- even when sunrise and sunset are hidden behind clouds and buildings.
I am thankful for every new day, for the mercies and compasion that accompany each one.
I am thankful for the ways in which days flow into weeks, then into months, and then years.
I am thankful for the decades that my life has included.
Today I am especially thankful for the gift of the days, weeks, and months that will comprise this new year - 2015.

I am thankful for the countless miracles and blessings that I experience every day.
I am thankful for a warm house, robes, and slippers on this frigid day.
I am thankful for food and water, for electricity and natural gas.
I am thankful for the safety and protection of my family.
I am thankful not only for our good health, but also for access to excellent medical care when we need it.
I am especially thankful for our warm house on this frigid day.

I am thankful for the gift of good friends.
I am thankful for their invitations to coffee, conversation, movies, and meals.
I am thankful for their emails, cards, texts, and gifts.
I am thankful for their challenges, wisdom, advice, and guidance.
I am especially thankful for how well they love me and support me even when I am not as attentive to them as they are to me.

I am thankful for the library. 

I am thankful for books and magazines and blogs. 

I am thankful for the ways in which men and women far wiser and more eloquent than I find ways to combine the 26 letters of the English language into words, phrases, poems, articles, and volumes that inspire, challenge, and entertain me. 

I am especially thankful today for Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore. 

I am thankful for humor and laughter.
I am thankful for curiosity and questions.
I am thankful for anger and cuss words.
I am thankful for forgiveness and grace.
I am thankful for sadness and sorrow and tears.
I am especially thankful for the ways in which my tears have sculpted and shaped me just as steady and slow-moving waters sculpt and shape caverns below the earth's surface and mountains above it.
(Speaking of humor, if you have two minutes to spare, click on this link and enjoy a good laugh. Make sure you watch all the way to the end.)

I am thankful for the body of Christ, broken for us more than 2,000 years ago.
I am thankful for the body of Christ, broken on a daily basis in churches and homes and other places on a daily basis.
I am thankful for the body of Christ, people who welcome other broken people into community.
I am thankful for the way that this thoughtful, prayerful woman describes her ordination and installation into a leadership role in her church.
I am especially thankful for the body of believers in and followers of Christ into which I have been invited to serve the body of Christ as an elder, the role into which I will be ordained this weekend, broken, wounded, scarred, afraid, awake, alert, hopefull, joyfull, and tearfull though I most certainly am.

Thankful, thankful, thankful, thankful.
Grateful, grateful, grateful, grateful.

What are you especally thankful for today?