Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is an awesome holiday.  I definitely appreciate its origins, tracking back to the early American settlers and their thankfulness to God for what he provided.  I also appreciate the holiday has broadened to something much more than remembering their thanks, or being thankful for the same things they were.

This Thanksgiving, these are the things I’m most thankful for:

1. My wife and son.  They’re happy and healthy, and keep me the same.  There aren’t words to capture the privilege and honor it is for me to be a husband and father to these two, the most special people in the world.
2. My parents:  all of them.  First for my mom & dad (who aren’t together any longer), and their spouses.  I love and respect them all!  Second for my wife’s parents who, for as long as I’ve known them as an adult, have treated me like their own son.  (It’s a long story, but my parents and Steph’s parents have known each other since Steph and I were larvae.  This marriage just might have been arranged...)
3. My sisters:  all four of them.  Two of them are married and their husbands are like brothers to me.  One is single (HA!  I don’t have to share you, Sissy!), and one is no longer with us.  (I love and miss you, Galyn.)
4. My grandparents, who will never know just how much they helped make me the man I am.
5. Jess and Will.  Jess, you’re like a daughter to us, and always will be.  You married a great guy and we’re so happy to see your family growing!
6. My ability to work and provide for my family, and to make enough to be able  share what we have with others--financially and materially.
7. My country and the privilege of serving her.  I get as frustrated as anyone else over some of the things we do as a nation, but I’ve traveled the world and remain unashamedly thankful and proud to be an American.  Related, I’m humbled and honored to serve among and alongside my military colleagues.  I am lucky enough to have spent nearly two and a half decades serving with and standing among some true and amazing heroes.
8. My job, that pays me to live in places for years at at time, with my family that other families save for a lifetime just to visit for a few weeks.  And many others only dream of such travel and never make it.
9. For the last couple years, living as a friend, peacefully in a country that my country used to be at war with.  Germany is fantastic beyond words.  The land and climate are amazing and the people are some of the best I’ve met anywhere in the world.  My German friends are dear to me and I’m humbled to be counted a friend by some of them.
10. Imagination: mine, my wife’s, and my sons.  I love seeing my son’s mind racing so fast and in so many directions--unconstrained to the best of our ability.  My parents allowed, and even fueled, my imagination and I’m doing my best to pass that kind of freedom on to my son.
11. My friends, some tied to my career and others who aren’t, who are always with us thanks to modern technology.  You all are a huge part of what keeps me and my family going strong and doing the things we do.

It’s great to be a dad!