thanksgiving, part III

It's quite popular, on Thanksgiving, to say what you're thankful for. So I guess I'll be unoriginal and, after examining my life, give a few things I'm thankful for.

My Family. But of course! I have been extremely blessed with wonderful parents and an amazing sister. I'm more lucky than I know to have loving parents who are still together and an excellent relationship with my little sister. We're best friends. And not only that, but I have great relationships with my extended family. Both my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. I'm so thankful for all of them. If it weren't for my family, then I wouldn't be here. And I don't mean that just in the biological sense; when I was at the "end of my rope," so-to-speak, many years ago, it was my baby sister who kept me pressing forward, and it was my parents who kept me from taking my own life. I am so thankful for the love and support they've given me.

My Friends. A very close second. My Junior year of college, nearly all of my friends abandoned me. I would spend the evenings in my dorm room, doing absolutely nothing. Long drives through the Cincinnati cold with the sleeting rains and the headlights on the freeways. My senior year, God blessed me with countless, innumerable friendships that continue to this day. It was then that I met my best friend Jessie, and it was then that I reconnected with Rob and Mandy. I became friends with Gambill, and I had a crush on a cute Thai girl named Faikham. Blake and I met and hit it off pretty well, and now I want to be him. I moved back home and rekindled old friendships--Patrick, Dylan and Tyler, Pat and Ashlie--and made new friends: Carly, Jessica, Kyle, J.J., etc. I am thankful for all my great friendships, the support and Christian community I find in them, and the laughter and love shared over healthy dinners and good beer.

My Job. I may make barely above minimum-wage, but God gave me my dream-job. Making coffee, great co-workers and friends, always fun times. I really do enjoy my job more than I've enjoyed any other job. I could get a better job, a higher-paying job, but I love the place I work now. I don't intend on making a career out of it, but it's a good place to be right now as I seek to discover what to do with the rest of my life.

My God. It's so cliche to say "I'm thankful for God!" but I really am. A lot of people just say it because, as Christians, they're sure they need to be thankful for him. When I say I'm thankful for God, I mean it in a concrete way. My God has comforted me time and time again. My God has convicted me, corrected me, encouraged me, guided me. My God has answered some of my greatest prayers, again and again: he brought me friendships in my darkest moments, he delivered me out of the hell epitomized in that dumpster behind the Clifton bar, and he has used the trials and tribulations of my life to not only draw me closer to him but to intensify my trust and hope in him. My God is a God of grace, mercy, and love; a God who grants forgiveness more than I want forgiveness; a God who, time and time again, inclines his ear to my cries and delivers me from the mire and clay. Some people worship gods of stone and straw; some people worship the gods of Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx (sex, power, and money); some people worship the gods of self-indulgence and self-gratification. My God demands self-sacrifice and a crucifixion of the flesh, but he delivers life whereas all these other gods deliver deepening dehumanization and ultimate destruction.