Thankful Book

I remember being a young teenager and writing in our family's "Thankful Book" each Thanksgiving. That book took us up until my Brother's crime.

I remember writing being thankful for frivolous things, like my car and material things like that. I remember writing being thankful for really important things like my Mom's lump not being breast cancer.

(I say frivolous only because when a car is next to the life of my Mom, or still having my brother here to talk with, a car doesn't hold all that much importance in life.)

Fast forward several years and now I'm thankful for some pretty intense deep things. In fact, much of what I'm thankful for also makes me feel sad in some ways.

I'm thankful that my brother is in a place where others are safe from his voices and paranoia and where he is relatively safe from himself too. I'm thankful he seems to have found some kind of peace in there. But it hurts like hell that I can't goof around with him on Thanksgiving, or that my son's won't really know him, or that he is off his medication again and likely is lost in his head like so often in his life. I live in a very conflicted place when it comes to my brother. But no matter what, I'm thankful he is around to call me, that I can go see him from time to time, and that I do have a lot of good memories of us together. (This is the picture I mentioned I couldn't post the other day. I now look at it and feel some joy and not all pain.)

I'm thankful for my Mother's life. That three year's ago her plans failed and the good Lord saved her from her own hand. I'm thankful she is finally past a lot of the trauma and deep, intense terrible pain from my brother's crime. But I'm still concerned for her and feel deeply for the heart pain she still feels.

I'm thankful for Nicky's ability to talk and interact with other children normally. I'm thankful that he was diagnosed early and treated early and is now no where near the diagnosis of Autism like he was just a couple years ago. He's in Kindergarten and even reading!

I'm thankful for Zane diagnosis, so that I can now start to heal his alignments with his diet and cleanses. Though it's not fun, is hard work, and terribly overwhelming at times I'm still beyond grateful that someone finally gave me the answers to getting him well.

I'm thankful for so much more. My beautiful baby, my hard working husband, my salvation, my step-dad, inlaws, business, jobs, house, cars and the list could go on and on.

And like many others in this world, my Thanksgiving will still be bittersweet and filled with contradictory feelings. I suppose that's what being human is all about. No one's lives are ever perfect and lovely and totally pain free.

Whatever your lives circumstances, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.