Ten Things of Thankful

Yeah! It is a quiet Saturday, and I am glad to be able to be here to link up to the Ten Things of Thankful blog hop hosted by Kristi of Thankful Me. 

Do you have your list written (at least in your head) and ready to post yet? I am sure you have some items that you will want to share and be able to reread sometime in the future. Things recorded now might bring you a few "I'd forgotten all about that" moments in the future. Click here to see what other bloggers are sharing this week and link up if like.

1. The painters finished painting our house. Our planters will have new soil and flowers and be back on the railing soon.

The summer makeover of the house: new
roof, cedar shakes replaced with Hardy board
siding, and a newly painted exterior

2. I survived the days of not being able to see through the windows in our home because they were covered with plastic while the house was being painted. This experience gave me a new appreciation of what it might be like to be vision impaired. I never realized how much I love being able to look outside, while being inside. I am thankful for my vision.

Windows sheathed on the
outside with plastic created a
very blurry scene

3. Although this was the week scheduled for painting the outside of the house, and June normally is warm and sometimes hot here, one day in particular had me a little concerned when there were some very light sprinkles starting to fall. That would not have been ideal circumstances for being able to get the job finished in the scheduled time, had the day become a rainy one. I was glad when the sprinkles subsided.

4. Being able to “let go” of papers carefully saved, which I once referred to quite frequently, has been quite freeing. They served their purpose at the time, but now they are free to go.

5. Many of the papers I had saved were covered with words of purple print that were so common way back when, and now quite faded after so many years of being saved in folders. I am grateful that secretaries no longer have to smell the odor associated with ditto machines.

Faded paper run on a ditto machine

6. I am thankful for the letters my mother wrote. As I came across letters from her among the papers I was sorting, I couldn’t help noting some of the things that she was doing at certain times of her life. It was interesting at the time she wrote them, but even more so now that I am the same age or older than she was at the time. Speaking of comparisons, I would love to have something written in my own handwriting when I was the age that my son was when he wrote this recipe (with added notations from his teacher).

Kashata recipe written by our son when
he was probably in the first grade

7. As my husband and I continue to each write a story for StoryWorth each week, I have come to appreciate the value of my journals, letters, calendar notations, photographs and newspaper articles as we try to recall and respond to the writing assignments for the week. This week I was able to find details for my husband that I wrote in my journal about a trip we took in 1995. So many of the details of one's life could be easily forgotten without these journal writings, unless one has a photographic memory.

8. I am thankful for timing, of being at a certain place at a given time and knowing that you had nothing to do with it. Often events unfold that make it apparent that you were the “key” that was needed, and things needed to unfold in a particular way for that to happen. I was privy to one of those “timing” incidences this week.

9. The emails and texts from family letting me know they arrived, that they are okay, that things are going better, etc. are much appreciated blessings. This week they were from all over the globe.

10. I am thankful for times to rest, and in particular for the Sabbath day, one designated as a day of rest from worldly labors and activities. For me, Sunday is my Sabbath day, and I am looking forward to it. I am thankful for my husband who respects and honors me and my desire to attend church and participate in activities on Sunday that are in keeping with the Sabbath. 

(Although I grew up in a family that for the most part did not attend church together, long after I left home, my mother told me that my father came to a point in his life when he no longer did any kind of work on the farm, except for those chores that needed to be done, i.e. milking the cows and making sure the animals had food and water. He had come to realize a pattern that had developed. To him it seemed that any time  he tried doing other kinds of work on the farm, except for the “ox in the mire” type on Sundays, invariably something went wrong. Something broke or just didn’t go as he had planned.)