Thanksgiving 2009

This year I am thankful for:

Being alive.
The End.
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This is one of those years that is just totally working me over. I feel like a ripe, juicy apple that went into the dryer and came out a craisin.

As with all tough times in life, the things that don't matter have just...fallen away. My list of gratitudes has been pared down to the basics:

I am thankful for a warm place to shelter my babies and for being able to put food in their tummies.

I am thankful for my parents. I've been feeling their unconditional love hitting me in waves across the miles. Time and again this year I've been so grateful for their help just when I need it most, in ways little and big. My day-to-day rollercoaster of emotional survival has caused all the irrelevancies of life just fall away. Some days I feel like the only people in this world who are by my side are the Savior and my parents.

And that has reminded me lately of another time 20 years ago when I felt the same way. I never thought I would get through that year and some nights I would be curled into a ball, crying my eyes out in bed, hoping life would be okay--and yet there was a strange combination of darkness and light in my heart. I think that if you hold fast to the Savior during the dark times, there is a corresponding light which comes to comfort. Sometimes peaceful and glowing, sometimes burning and bittersweet.

Because my parents helped me fight and claw my way out of that year, I emerged a different and better girl. I think I will have another phoenix-from-the-fire ending this time around, too. No matter how hopeless the outlook that defining year 20 years ago, I felt the rock-steady foundation of my parents' presence. And twenty years later I feel the same.

I am thankful to be a parent, myself, and be able to give that foundation to my own children.

I am thankful for healthy children.

I am thankful for my beater van which keeps on running and has no car payment.

I am thankful for my faith in a Savior whose presence I feel, like that other dark time, almost tangibly. Sometimes I feel Him in the room with me, just there to love me even though I am failing miserably at being brave and strong and good. Or even just nice.

And I have been crying as I write this. My eyes are puffy and red. And so I guess I'm not a craisin after all--more a huge pomegranate.