Monday Morning Memo: Thankful

It was 10:15 pm this past Saturday night and I had finally sat down to rest.  It had been a long week and an especially long day.  As I shared last Monday, I had just returned from a weeklong trip in Utah and so the days that followed were spent trying to get caught up.  By late Saturday…I was exhausted.

I found myself sitting in my chair complaining to myself.  Besides being worn out, I was frustrated because everything on my list hadn’t gotten done. As I have shared before…I’m a list maker and not getting everything checked off by the end of the day, doesn’t set well with me.

Then, for some reason, my mind went back to my time in Utah and something I had experienced.  Salt Lake City is a beautiful town with the most clear, blue sky I have ever seen.  It has a great transit system, nice Uber drivers and some wonderful restaurants to enjoy.  But, and you knew there would be a “but”, there was something there I didn’t expect.  Homeless people.  Lots of homeless people.  We didn’t have a car so we did a lot of walking, and over and over again we were approached by those much less fortunate than us. 

I wondered if they had families.  If so, did their loved ones know where they were?  Did they ever have any contact with them?  Had their family given up on them…or had they given up on their family?  What led them to be living on the streets?  What chain of events occurred that led some of them to be sitting in the train shooting up to get their next fix?

It was so heartbreaking to me to see some going through trashcans, hoping to find some discarded food.  Others walked up and down the street, asking anyone who would listen if they would give them food or money.  Then some appeared to just ride the train back and forth, from one end of the town to the other, to escape the temperatures that settled in the high 90’s.

I’m guessing the Lord brought these memories to mind Saturday night to jolt me back to reality.  There I sat, complaining that I have a list of things to do in my very comfortable air-conditioned home.  I never want for food nor have to beg from strangers for money.  I am blessed with a wonderful family whom I dearly love and who even love me in return.  And at the end of the day, I don’t have to hunt around for a dry, safe place to lay my head to sleep.

So today I will choose to be thankful.  Thankful for being blessed way beyond what I deserve.  Thankful that life’s irritations are just that…irritations…and in the scheme of things they are quite minor.  Thankful that today, July 4^th, 2016, I live in a country where I am free to worship my Lord and Savior.

Does the “stuff” of life have you down?  Look around you and make a list of all the things with which you have been blessed.  I have a feeling that it won’t be long until you will begin to feel your load lighten and hopefully you will enjoy this holiday and the coming days a little more.  Maybe if we can all do this we can be thankful for a long to-do list…even if everything doesn’t get checked off!