I am full of thankful

“Bad things have happened, but we’ve managed to endure it.”

Not exactly the wonderful frame of mind one wants to take into Thanksigiving.

But really?  We have not had the best track record.

2005 brought a stroke for me and a fall full of physical therapy and worries of what kind of mother I would be if I couldn’t heal.

2006 found us reeling from Peyton’s diagnosis and we actually celebrated our Thanksgiving from a room at the children’s hospital.

In retrospect, I wish I’d known that we getting ready to enter a season of loss, because I would have spent the entire day of Thanksgiving 2007 on my knees in thanks for the lives we are blessed to have.

However, this year, we are beginning a new phase of our lives and I have never been more thankful for anything in all my years.

Wednesday brought the gift of a CBC that showed amazing counts, the likes I have never seen from Peyton’s blood…E.V.E.R. Awesome, fantastic, wonderful, tremendous, remarkable counts that bring with them the budding confidence that her body is rebounding from the years of chemotherapy.  She gained weight, she added height, she looks good and feels better. She is cancer-free.

I am overwhelmingly thankful.

In this economy, my husband has a good job.  Although we are a family separated, we are together on this day.  We are not wondering where we’re going to find money to put groceries in our fridge or shoes for our children. We have our home, insurance and a sense of security.

I am humbly thankful.

We have three children who fill our days with laughter and challenge and reminders of how new the world is every moment.  They are physically whole and spiritually growing in faith, they have the strength to fight and hearts full of love.

I am joyfully thankful.

Our lives are intertwined with family and friends, those who support us and love us and who make our lives richer in every way.

I am fantastically thankful.

We are looking into a future…one we haven’t let ourselves contemplate for so long.  We are making plans, we are seeing beyond these immediate days and anticipating what tomorrow brings..in good ways.

I am sincerely thankful.

For me, Thanksgiving isn’t about Pilgrims and turkeys, it isn’t just a day to eat until we fear combustion, it isn’t a day to mentally prepare for Black Friday.

Thanksgiving is so much simpler, more basic.

I give thanks for my children who are alive today, for my husband who share his life with me, each blessing we’ve seen, each tribulation we’ve survived, for a powerful God who has gifted us with so much to be thankful for.

I hope Thanksgiving finds you full of turkey and love and family and happiness…full of the knowing that it is not the things that you have that enrich you, but having those things that you could not live without.

Minus the turkey, every day is Thanksgiving for me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

The Mayhews

Peter, Anissa, Nathaniel, Rachael and Peyton