then sings my soul

So it's been a long year...
~Over the Rhine, Snow Angels

What a year so far. I love that Thanksgiving comes just close enough to the end of the year that the remaining month can fall into a certain peaceful perspective as everyone prepares for the increasing rigors of Christmas. (Although I'm wondering if the state of the economy, and everyone's basic poverty, will make for simpler, more joyful Christmases this year -- stripping things down to the essentials, as it were. Hey, I can hope.) There's always something to complain about, and life is always difficult to some degree; I love, and am growing to love more as I get a little older, the institution of Thanksgiving -- a day consecrated to the pondering of blessings, to the celebration of good things even in the face of hardship, to joy.

So for what am I thankful, this Thanksgiving of my twenty-seventh year? I am thankful for how I have been brought through one of the most difficult times of my life; I am thankful to be home; I am thankful for the weapons forged in my hands against fear; I am thankful for my parents, for my sister, for my brother-in-law, for how miraculously God has raised a phoenix from ash in our family; I am thankful for the work God is doing in me, for the transformations taking place that I hadn't thought possible; I am thankful for a job (yes, a job! I am now gainfully employed at Borders -- hardly prestigious, to be sure, but in many ways I'm looking forward, greatly, to returning to retail...and income!), for God's timely and promised provision.

I am thankful for snow, for brown leaves on almost-bare trees, for the brooding half-winter lake, for the hills. I am thankful for friends new and old, for loved ones here and far away, for deepening closenesses, for Meg and Phillip and Josie. I am thankful for Simon, whose cuteness and absolute trust comfort me immeasurably. I am thankful for the redemption of time. I am thankful for new beginnings, for bends in the road whispering of new and thrilling unknowns to come. I am thankful for things and people that are too full to put into words, too deeply moving to render on this blog. I am thankful for language, for love, for mystery. I am thankful for the laughter that prevents me from taking myself too seriously too frequently, that unites soul to soul, that heals. I am learning to be thankful for life in the question. I am thankful for promises, and for change. I am thankful for what I have learned through the difficult things of the past year, and for the beautiful things that have sustained me through the difficult things.

I am thankful for you, my dear and faithful readers, whose encouragement over the past four years has kept me writing and sharpened my vision and my focus. I am thankful that somewhere, out there, the private thoughts that I scribble from a keyboard in Western Pennsylvania are heard and understood all over the country, the continent, the globe. Some of you I know very well; some of you I have never met; but on this American holiday of rendering thanks to the Giver of all good things, I give thanks for, and love, all of you. Thank you, so much, for reading.