Opinion : 'Tis the season, for Thanksgiving

It seems the thing to do on Facebook is to list one thing you are thankful for every day in Thanksgiving, and I kinda like the idea.

Thanksgiving is a time we traditionally, at least USED TO, take time out to thank God for our blessings over the past year.

Now, it's turned into the "Holiday shop until you drop" day.

Maybe it's an age thing, but it seems I find myself much more thankful for the people and things in my life than I probably used to be.

Of course, the older I get, I appreciate the gift of life more than I used to. We see more folks younger than us on the obituary page, and that always makes you pause and be thankful for just being the reader and not the story.

As our kids grow up and have their own babies I find myself feeling much more appreciative for healthy babies than I ever thought to be while having my own.

Even when I had two ruptures while carrying 2 of our babies and having a 3 month old come down with Meningitis, I didn't realize how fortunate we were to walk away with 3 more healthy children. I'm not sure if I was just in survival mode or if back in the "old days" the internet hadn't happened for me to realize the seriousness of both these conditions.

However, both times, I was wise enough to pray while in these situations and then to thank God for His protection.

It seems like our society has almost made God a "hush hush" word, almost as if saying a four letter curse word.

But at this Thanksgiving season, I find it so annoying to hear someone say, "Take time to thank 'your' god", it makes me picture a tiny voodoo doll in someone's pocket that they are praying to.

I guess I don't have a problem realizing that in our tiny, infinite minds, we should realize that there is Someone out there much larger than us, that created all that we see around us.From the beautiful sky down to the tiniest bug crawling on the ground below us, it's too beautiful to have resulted from a collision in our solar system.

Then I become thankful for the location of my ancestors. The moves they made in the past generation resulted in my being born in these United States of America, and in a nice quiet state of Iowa. I am always thankful for the "coincidences" that happened in our family tree that resulted in my landing in Benton County.

As a child, we drove up and down this gravel road that we live on, and never once did it cross my mind that someday I would be holding a piece of that land in my hands that was cherished by another family that I hadn't yet met.

Today, I look out the window at the hills, and the trees, wondering which trees our family had planted and which just "happened".

We have so much to be thankful for.

And while I'm thankful, I also realize that we can't take any of it for granted.  After seeing the devastation in Illinois this week, I wondered if it had happened on our homestead, would I want to rebuild there. It took all of 2 minutes before I came up with, "Of course, THIS is home."

As I realize that belongings in the long run aren't anything but 'things'. Living where our family has lived for almost 100 years is well, priceless and keeps you grounded.

So on this Thanksgiving, I am most thankful for EVERYTHING that God has blessed us with...the things we hold in our hands, the people in our lives and the unseen things like friendships, love and freedom.

How can one NOT be thankful?