It’s that time of year, again! Whether you refer to it as ‘The Holiday Season,’ ‘Proposal Season,’ or maybe even ‘cold season’- it’s upon us. This is the time of year that Facebook begins to fill with posts that start with “I want” or “I hope I get” in reference to the upcoming Christmas festivities. It’s the time of year when “giving” is emphasized but “receiving” is then inevitable. So I want to take a moment before the mayhem sets in to speak on a topic that I’ve been “conditioning” myself for all year: thankfulness.

Thanksgiving in my household has always been one of the best times of the year. Some of my earliest memories in life were watching my mom cook for Thanksgiving and hoping someday I’d have the patience to prepare such a meal for my own family. She wanted everything to be perfect - a direct reflection of my mom as a person. As my siblings got older and moved on to college, Thanksgiving became one of the only times during the year that the whole family was together again. But this year has been different for me. If you’ve followed along in any of my previous posts, you’ve recognized that this year has been full of many trials for me on both a mental and physical level. I’ve experienced a move, a breakup, struggles with anxiety, an appendectomy, a new love, a new outlook, periods of drought in my spiritual life, and periods of absolute blessing. But the one thing that I’ve tried to do more than ever this year is to be thankful. It’s so easy, in the world that we live in today, to envy others. It’s easy to discount our own blessings because they don’t seem “big enough.” The moment I realized that I was doing this in my own life, I asked someone for help.

Nick is always willing to appease me when it comes to crazy ideas. He doesn’t ask many questions if he knows that he’s contributing to something that will ultimately make me happy. I asked him, one day, to tell me 3 things from his day that he was most thankful for. The guidelines were that there were no guidelines- it could be anything. So, over the weeks, they piled in every single night.

Some days it was something as small as being in a short line at Starbucks or getting to eat his favorite sandwich in his hometown, but other days it would be something as big as having a revelation of how he felt about his life or his future. Even on his worst days, he always found three things to send me and because of that, I learned how to envy his life in a positive manner. Instead of feeling like life was constantly working against me, I learned how to envy the happiness that he was able to find on days when it just didn’t seem to exist and I began to apply that principle to my own life. This is the first season of gift-giving and “holiday cheer” that I’m feeling like life has already blessed me with more than I could have ever imagined. I am forever thankful to have a roof over my head, a family that I can call any hour of the day, a car to get me to my job, breath in my lungs, and for friendships and relationships that teach me what thankfulness is really all about.