Thanksgiving

I'm working on the gratitude thing, I really am.

And, I am grateful.
The box explosion has been contained - almost everything has a home, and the stuff that doesn't is on its way out the door.
I have all my dishes back in the kitchen, and there's room in the cabinets.

But.

Cancer strikes again.

This time it's a friend I've known for some thirty years. He's about my age, and found out last week that he has a brain tumor. Still waiting to hear some of the details, but we know it's the spreading kind. They've operated, which has relieved some of the pressure on his brain, but weren't able to get all of it.

and, again, I find myself asking, "why him?"

He is a good man, he is honest. He goes to church and is kind to children. He loves art and sports and drives in the country and horses and does his best to do good and not harm in this world.

He doesn't deserve this - no one does.

He's been in the hospital for a couple of weeks already; first while they figured out what was up, then to recover from surgery. We've gone to visit him several times; have spent a lot of time talking about good food. They have him on a low-carb diet, which leaves him hungry. And since it's too hard to talk about the hard stuff, food is an easy topic. (I understand why they're adding insult to injury this way, but helped him skate around the edges of the rules on Thanksgiving.  The meal we put together for him was kinda-sorta low-carb - and the nurses all looked the other way. After they helped us reheat the plate so his dinner would be hot.)

So, I am grateful - for small pleasures able to smother large pains, if only for a short time. For a top-notch medical team - who are giving him the best care around. For laughter - we laugh anyways when I see him. For his faith - it is helping him through this.

Give thanks, always and for everything.
(that's in the Bible somewhere...)
I'm trying.