+and even on the phone you're eight hours from my time

Thanksgiving, giving of thanks, a day of thanks…

I don’t know if thankfulness says it well enough. I think that thankfulness doesn’t begin to explain the circumstances that I currently enjoy. The ability to have free time, for instance, is a luxury that I forget to be thankful for. I am privileged to come from a family who has provided for me financially and physically, who has taught me lessons and enabled me to sustain myself as a twenty-something.  I’m not just saying privileged as a passing adjective to assert my place in the world. I am saying it as a holy-cow-who-decided-me realization. 

I do not believe it is without responsibility but I do not understand it completely yet. I know that I have money, expendable money, that while I work hard, I still have time to breathe. I live in a room all by myself and I have more clothes than I could wear in a year. I own not one pair of shoes but dozens and I not only eat, I probably eat too much. I have time to work out, I have money to pay for a phone and time to talk on it.

I own a car and have money to put gas into it, DVDs and books and a computer and a TV. An ipod and a kindle, a really nice camera, lamps, clocks, jewelry, photos, decorations, curtains, bedding, notes, cards, geez louise…everything.

I certainly don’t need anything for Christmas. I have loved ones to see and enough money to travel home to see them. More than all of these material things I have relationships. I have a God who loves me and has given me each and every one of these things. I think it is incredible how I do not need any of these things, yet I have a job to sustain their presence in my life, right?

So how do I refocus my life to understand this gift of God? Would I actually be happy with less? Would I maintain my resolve of thankfulness with none of the blessings in my life? Isn’t being alive at all a blessing? I’ve tried to think it through…what if my entire place burned down, or my parents lost their jobs, or something else tragic happened – would I still be so “thankful” or would I curse God and desire pity and people to cater to me? I regretfully think that the latter would be more likely to occur.

Solomon, Solomon, ever since I ready your words about your lessons with wisdom and God you’ve tied my mind in knots…