Say Thankya

They were the lucky ones, and on some level every one of them knew it...which was luckiest of all.

~ S. King, The Dark Tower

I struggle with being grateful. Not because I'm not, or that I don't have reason to be. Far from it - sometimes it's the recognition of just how much I have that prevents me from being able to acknowledge it.

I don't know if it's just that same old liberal white (Mennonite?) guilt talking or what. Maybe I still labour under the impression that good things come to the deserving (in which case, somebody's got some fairly rose-coloured glasses when it comes to tallying up the marks on my moral report card). Maybe I struggle with the knowledge that the rain falls on the good and the bad, seemingly without any sense of order (in which case, why me?).

Sometimes it's just misguided (and ultimately useless, really) self-defense: if I don't acknowledge how much something means to me, then it's less of a target. Or it won't hurt so much if it's taken away.

Regardless of why I do it, I do believe that when I withhold thanks, I spurn the Giver. Saying "thank you" honours the gift and the spirit in which it was given. It humbles the recipient, who is forced to acknowledge a connection with (if not a dependence upon) someone other than herself.

All this to say that in the past few weeks, I have found myself becoming increasingly grateful. I don't deserve any of this, any more than the homeless clown who begs for money as I pass him on my way home from work deserves to have been let go from the circus.

[Not a metaphor. He sits on Nicollet Mall wearing floppy shoes and the saddest clown make-up I have ever seen.]

In a land of mounting job losses, I have employment I love. Surrounded by foreclosures, I live in a comfortable home. With the cruel hands of Illness and Death knocking too often at the doors of those I love, our family gets away with the odd asthma puffer and carrying an epi-pen.

Although I'm woefully unprepared and most days fall entirely short of the mark, I get to be "Mom" to two kids of such splendidiferousness that I have to catch my breath sometimes when I look at them.

Despite having been to hell and back (or, perhaps, because of it), my husband and I talk idly about retirement planning or upcoming vacations where once there was no shared future.

And all this is but a taste of what's to come when we finally can run headlong Further Up and Further In.

It's a golden life of such wealth that I understand what it means to have an embarrassment of riches. I'm tempted to feel ashamed, to look down and shuffle my feet a bit. Or somehow minimize its grandeur by complaining about the little things (oh, they are so little).

Today I can't. Today I need to be thankful, unabashadly grateful, no hedging.

To the Great Giver of the Great Good: Thank you.