Giving Thanks

Like most people, Thanksgiving is a time of reflection for me. I try to be grateful every day for the blessings in my life, but Thanksgiving Day offers a reason to be more diligent and thorough in my introspection.

I’m thankful that I’m sober, first and foremost. I’d be dead or institutionalized by now if I hadn’t been blessed with the moment of clarity that allowed me to see the certainty of this. I’m thankful that upon having this epiphany, the desire to drink miraculously dissipated. I mean, it just went away. Poof. Gone. This truly is a miracle. I’m not the only one who’s been blessed with this miracle, I know many others in the AA fellowship who have had similar experiences. If you’ve ever lived with the burden of an addiction like alcoholism, you know how dark that life can be. Mine was a life without hope, and without spirit. I had drawn the curtains on life, and was just waiting for the last remnants of light to flicker and go out completely. Which brings me to other blessings.

I’m thankful for the friends and family I’m blessed with. It was my friends who saw the flame was dying out, and they had the balls to take action. And it was my family – my parents and sister and her family – that nursed me back to health. I won’t be seeing my family today, but I’ll be spending the day with several of the friends that saved me. I’ll make sure that I take each one of them aside – individually, casually – and tell them that I love them.

I’m thankful for my health. To the best of my knowledge, I’m in pretty good health. I get out of bed a little stiff in the mornings, but I don’t hurt too bad. I might have lost a step or two on the basepaths, but I still move fairly well and my reflexes are pretty damn sharp. I can do most anything I want to do, physically, and do it better than I did ten years ago. This is truly a blessing.

I’m thankful for opportunities. I’m at a crossroads in life right now, and I have some decisions to make in the near future. But thanks to three and a half years of sobriety, and trying to live life right, and do the right thing and make good decisions, I have opportunities now, and choices. Will I choose to follow the entrepreneurial instinct that has been nagging at me most of my life? I think I might. I get excited thinking about it. A new challenge, doing something I’ve often thought about doing. I’m gathering information now, and it looks promising.

I’m thankful for the opportunity, desire and ability to write. I’m thankful that I’m passionate about it. I may never find an agent or a publisher for my work, but maybe I will. I have the opportunity to try. I love to write, I’m learning about the publishing industry and what it takes to be a published novelist, and I’m getting better. I’m improving, and honing my skills. I’m working at the craft. And I’m extremely grateful for this blessing.

I’m grateful for a relationship with a God of my understanding. I’m thankful for those rare moments of insight, when things just happen in a way that I know it has to be God’s doing. I’m thankful for the awareness, and those moments when the lightbulb flashes.

I’m thankful for a lot of things, some of them are:

A cool autumn morning
The little townhouse I call my own
A ten foot putt that drops in the side door
A blazing purple and orange sunset
A gentle ocean breeze
A bank shot on the eight ball that drops like a feather into the corner pocket
The pretty, gentle little older woman whom resembles my mother and makes me think of her
The guy in traffic who waves me over when I’m trying to merge
Living near the ocean
A drive that stays in the air and flies right down the middle of the fairway
Green lights all the way to work
The good looking girl in the car next to me at the light, who smiles and waves and makes me feel a little younger
Penman Road
And
The American troops that make it safe for me to pursue my happiness

Happy Thanksgiving and turkey, dressing and gravy for all the good people…