Thankful...

A friend of mine asked me in an email what I am thankful for this year. With Thanksgiving Day's arrival tomorrow and my plans for the weekend looming on the horizon, many of the blessings I am thanking God for are in the form of the people I love the most. I will be spending time this weekend back home in Grand Rapids with "my babies" - my Tae and Erika and Vonnie and Anthony and Squirmy. I am truly thankful that God uses them quite consistently to change my mind about being self-centered.

I am thankful that God has healed me enough and is still healing me enough to be a good aunt/surrogate parent to my brother's children. My plans have momentarily changed in terms of moving out of state right now due to some issues that have arisen with my youngest niece. The truth is as much as I wish I could just pack up and leave them all, I am not released to do that JUST yet.

And I thank God for that, even though I do feel a bit boxed in at times because I know that I could be doing a lot of living somewhere else. But, I thank God that I can impact their lives as much as I impact the lives of the young people I see everyday at work and the lives of the young people I will one day touch. I want to start at home, with my own babies, and I thank God for the chance to be there for these children who need my brother's love and presence but do not truly have either. But they do have me, and I am not fighting that anymore.

I also thank God for my mother, who is still in the land of the living. We don't always see eye to eye on things but mostly we are comrades-in-arms when it comes to our family and most specifically her grandchildren and great-grandson, whom she adores. We fight together for their futures, and I thank God I am not alone in the struggle to change their lives.

It may seem wierd but I am thankful that I am needed by my family, that my nieces and nephews love me, that I have people to care for. If it were not for them I would be the loneliest woman on earth. So many people in our world do not have family. So, I am thankful for their smiles, their laughter, their passions, and their dreams. I am thankful even for the times when they try to assert their independence and I have to rein them back in ("You ain't grown YET!). And I am thankful for their futures, and I cannot wait to see the kind of men and women they will grow to be.

For this, I am thankful. My life is so full.