A Thoughtful Thankful Weekend

Thanksgiving has always been one of my least favorite holidays. I guess I never really saw the point in it, although I did really enjoy the pumpkin pie that I was promised. I never really liked the holiday until this year. This year thanksgiving really forced me to be thankful (you guessed it!). I think the only real incentive I had to enjoy the weekend at all was the knowledge of seeing my cousins who were coming home from university and the amount of food that was being prepared. This year I was really looking forward to both of those things but I also felt so reflective as the week went on and thanksgiving loomed.

One of the thoughts that weighed heavily on my mind were ones relating to my cousin Matthew. For those of you who don't really have any background on Matthew, I'll fill you in. In May 2013 my family got the devastating news that my cousin was in the hospital and that he was not doing well. We had no idea if that meant he was going to live or die. That weekend will be burned in my memory forever. I remember 2 hours before I was drinking Starbucks and enjoying my Friday night, anticipating my weekend. Then the call came and I was in my room crying, trying not to let my little sister know too much about the situation. We spent that weekend and the rest of the week basically living in the ICU - critical care, it really was a nightmare. Yet there was a light at the end of the tunnel. An unconventional light - but a light. Matthew lost his leg but he was alive. It has been many, many months (that's my way of lazily telling a story so I don't have to actually count how many months have passed), and I'm really glad to say that Matthew is walking.

He's far from where he could be but he's so far from where he was. It's really been a rough time, but one thing that's made this such a cause for thanksgiving is not that he is alive (which yes, I'm so thankful for that), it's that God has a plan for Matthew. He is literally living proof of that. He was so close to death and now he's breathing. He lost his leg and now he's walking. He was in ICU and he's alive. It blows my mind that his life was hanging in the balance and God could have let him die - I could be writing a completely different post tonight, and I hopefully it would still be one written in thanksgiving. The thing that really gets me is that God saved him. He literally, tangibly saved his life. That is what I'm thankful for. Not only did my God save Matthew for something better, but He sent His son to save my life. That is so much more real to me this year.

And that's what makes this thanksgiving so much better than the ones before it. I know this is a little bit of a different blog post, but it really is something that I felt needed to be written down. I know that my whole family can relate to the thankful feeling that filled the air this year. Of course there are so many other things that happened in this past year that I'm thankful for, but this is by far the most important.

Happy Thanksgiving to all the canadians reading, and to everyone else, you don't have to have a specific day devoted to thankful thoughts. It really won't hurt to be thankful every other day as well!