Happy Thanksgiving!

There's so much to be said, I'm at a loss of where to start. It's really a day that can fit the opening of A Tale of Two Cities well:

It is the best of times: life is really good for most of us, and I'll admit I feel this especially so right now - God has seen me through from my absolute worst low of lows just two months ago and brought me to being "pretty darn good" now. It's also my first Thanksgiving "living on my own" (and trying to deal with the clutter of boxes that contains my life right now).

And yet it is the worst of times: we are a nation at war, and many families are celebrating Thanksgiving while a loved one fights for our nation half a world away. Many other families are celebrating Thanksgiving for the first time without a beloved relative. This will be my family's first Thanksgiving without my two Grandmothers. For the family of one of my friends, this will be their first Thanksgiving without his mother, and for another friend, their first without her uncle.


The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade just ended with Santa going by on his float (preceded immediately, I'll add, by Christian singer Natalie Grant!), and in my family, that means the official start of the Christmas season. More specifically, it means we are now "allowed" to play Christmas music. The required first song of the season: Mannheim Steamroller's "Deck the Halls". My parents, I'm sure, had the real CD at the ready at their house, and I had my iTunes cued up and standing by, plugged into the speakers on my desk ready to blast out the notes and thus complete the morning.

The one unfortunate part of the opening of the Christmas music season is that KTIS will start playing lots of songs that I like less well. I'm not a fan of most traditional Christmas music, favoring instead some of the more contemporary rock-ish renditions. This is not to say all of the 'old' Christmas songs are bad, I'm just jaded and tired of hearing the same ones over and over year after year, which is why it will be exciting to start branching out to newer recordings by Steven Curtis Chapman, MercyMe, Avalon, Big Daddy Weave, Barlow Girl, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, et al.

But I digress.

For today, like most other days, I take a moment to pause and remember to live a life of "Thanksliving", rather than one day of "Thanksgiving". Here are just a few of the things I am thankful for each morning when I wake up:

My Mom and Dad and the rest of my loving family
My wonderful friends
My education
My car
My guitar
My nation
My Awesome God