Thanksgiving

There are all these things in this season of my life - lessons, truths, insights, what have you - bits of broken glass, worn shiny and smooth by the relentlessness of grace and pain and breathing. I feel like I have pockets jangling with well-worn color, pieces to hold between my fingers while rubbing the uneven edges: the necessity of hope; the entanglement of joy and pain; the importance of gratitude for my soul's well-being and survival.

We set aside today for gratitude. And I wish there were something here today for someone else but I write because it's cheaper than therapy and my voice on the page annoys me less than the sound of it out loud and so, today, for me, I write my gratitude, this pouring out that fills.

It makes sense to start with whatever's closest and right now I'm warm, and full, and in the company of people who love me - against the odds - so I'll start here.

I'm thankful for Wes and Heather. I'm grateful for the day we first really met, them sitting at our dining room table, hours and hours going by while we caught ourselves in a hundred "oh you too?" moments, slowly and bravely telling our stories, finding in each other safety and community and church. I'm grateful that if I'm not sneaking baby Eli out of his carseat, someone is handing him to me, allowing this woman the gift of teaching someone to blow raspberries, of feeling the sweet limpness of a baby finally giving in to sleep while praying beggy prayers for grace and favor on his little life. I'm grateful for the way they have loved our friends, quick to take them as their own, and quick to offer their own friends for us to love. I'm grateful that we can choose our families and that I'm spending Thanksgiving this year with a part of mine.

I'm thankful that I'm learning these three terrible truths of my existence: that I am so ruined and so loved and in charge of so little (Anne Lamott). This is the kind of pain that heals.

I'm thankful for my family - these people who are still my training ground in forgiveness, and showing up for each other, and learning to share.

I'm thankful for a new understanding of "eshet chayil" from Proverbs 31 - that it's not necessarily about what we do, but how we do it - and the exquisite challenge to do what I do with courage and heart.

I'm thankful for my pit crew: Amanda, Beth, Sharon, Joan, Marcy, Mariah, Josh, Lisa, Micah, Cyndi, Corey, Anna, Janelle, Becky, Sandra, Katie, Amy, Jessika, Brooke, Jimmy, Becca, others even still. "What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them" (St. Anne again, of course). I am thankful for 3:33pm prayers, glasses of wine, life-saving sustenance via Facebook messages and homemade bread and the benefit of the doubt and sushi lunch. I am thankful for people who do not flinch at my words, who help me separate the true from the nonsense. I'm thankful for connections instant and deep and I'm thankful for slow, halting steps toward friendship. I'm thankful that I spent the very worst day of this year in bed with my best friend watching British soaps and eating gummy worms.

I'm thankful for cardigans from Target, for iced tea, for the homemade quilt Alissa made for my wedding.

I am thankful that I am finally learning to pray. I am thankful for this confession: "You and I both know what we are dealing with here" (Anne Lamott); for this honesty: "come as Your true self and contradict the world so full of unbearable deathliness" (Walter Brueggemann); for this awareness: "you can let the whole scenario be bathed in God's gentle, gracious light, and in that light even for a few stolen moments, you can behold" (Brian McLaren); for this consistency: "give us today our daily bread" (The Book of Common Prayer).

I am thankful that my unfaithfulness serves to render me speechless in the face of God's great faithfulness to me.

I am thankful that Todd Waggoner chose me nearly a decade ago and keeps choosing me every day. I know some days that choice is harder than we'd both like it to be - I'm thankful that most days it still seems like a no-brainer. I'm thankful that we are both equally certain that we got the better end of this deal. I am thankful that we still send flirty text messages to each other during church. And I'm thankful that I have never once felt afraid. God alone knows the enormity of that gift.

I am thankful for my grandmother's stuffing recipe and that my husband begs me to make it every year.

I'm thankful for the way this last miscarriage shook me out of my silence, making me so desperate to refuse the shame that I stripped down naked and paraded my bare, broken self around the Internet. I'm thankful for the sweet, freeing release of being denied the possibility of pretending that I have it together. I'm thankful for the light streaming in through the cracks in my heart and my sense of self-worth and my desperation to convince you of my competency. Oh my God, thank you. I'm so grateful that the light does get in.

I am thankful for the bread and the wine and that there is more than enough for this grace-beggar.

There is so much here and it's all a gift. And I am thankful.