I want to share these posts with you, to help you consider what you are thankful for. Perhaps some are identical, perhaps some are analogous, perhaps some are completely foreign to you. But the thing that should stick with you is having an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE, always. Just this one simple change in your life, on its own, can transform you.
Some of the details of these posts are rather personal; obviously, I'm not revealing anything i don't want to reveal. At this late stage, my life is an open book for reading and enhancement of others. But it also means there may be things which don't make sense because you don't know my background. Hopefully it will be clear enough in context, but leave a comment if there's something that's unclear, and I'll clarify. May God bless you in this season of thankfulness.
A
month of thanks, except that it’s being shoved down your
collective social media throats. Excuse moi.
Nov 26. I am thankful that God had gone to such
detailed trouble to make certain coincidences and/or conveniences happen in my
life.
Thank you for introducing Mom to the Gilberts so early in my
life. For letting me train at Clyde Quick’s baton when I didn’t think I’d be
teaching for a career, let alone band. And for putting Melissa in that band.
Thank you for putting the circumstances in place that brought me
home from Caltech to care for mom when her cancer came back. I probably would
have stuck it out in Pasadena without that motivational leave, and I probably
would have hated the life it led to.
Thank you for putting Penryn’s program out there for me while I
was still at Newcastle. I thought it was probably a mistake at the time, but of
course it was perfect for me - I was an adult there, rather than Mrs. Smith’s
son.
Thank you for the timing of early 1992. I needed to leave Cali.
But three things tied me there: my program was still growing and thriving, my
girlfriend was here, and my father was living with me. So, (1) Penryn and
Loomis chose to consolidate the band positions, triggering the thoughts to
leave, (2) Cassie and I realized religious differences would prevent a good
marriage, and (3) my dad up’n died. Cassie, to her infinite credit, stayed with
me through the hard weeks following Dad’s death, and then we went our separate
ways.
Thank you for sending me Your hint at lunch that fateful day
that I had planned to give up interviewing and just take one of the jobs I’d
been offered. But the book I was reading suggested that one should ALWAYS
listen when someone wants to hire you. So I went to the interview at Kuna, and
they offered, and I spent seven great years there.
Thank you for sending Wendy and me to Buhl for that interview
while I was still in Kuna. It convinced us that the Magic Valley would be a
nice place to move someday, and we were right. YOU were right.
Thank you for the opening in Payette at just the right time.
Thank you for the available house in Payette at just the right time. And for
making it just the right time to leave Boise and Kuna.
Thank you for weaning me off the anti-depressants just in time
to become the father of twins. I don’t know how I could have managed that any
other way.
Thank you for making the fiasco with the PSD school board so
public that word reached Jerome, and this job was recommended to me by its
occupant at the time.
Thank you for separating me from Mirian before we got married,
and for sabotaging the budding relationship I’d just started so that when
Melissa sent me that first email, I was available to be with her.
Thank you for preventing us from checking on her that fateful
night, and pushing me to take the kids to pizza and then church while she
“slept”, so that when I discovered she was dead, the youngsters were out of the
house. I dread to think what if...
And thank you for freeing Dana up from her previous, thirty-year marriage at
just the time I thought I was ready to date again, about 18 months later, and
then for not allowing her to have found someone else during the three months I
was stupid and tried to make her decisions for her.
Thank you for taking such
good care of me, Lord.
A
month of thanks, just like any other month, except it
happens to reside on the Act II blog as well. It probably has a big head because of that, too.
Nov 27. I am thankful for the depth of the Word
of God. I cannot
understand how this is possible, but even though I've read the entire Bible
five times all the way through and the "more frequented portions" at
LEAST twice that, I am still discovering new things that the Lord can teach me
from the same passages. It's as if He's changing the words around or something. I'll go back into my four
binders of notes I've taken and realize that the lesson He is teaching me this
morning is something completely unnoticed by me before today.
The
Word of God is a living thing, changing within our minds not so much because IT
changes but because WE are changed by it. I remember my dear friend Victor
Arreaga sharing theology with me before I was saved, and I verbally ripped it
to shreds. A year later we came back to the same passages and I literally could
not figure out what my objection had been, let alone rip any part of it to
pieces. And that wasn't for a lack of trying or "brainwashing" or any
such thing: My mind had been opened.
My mind has been opened. Here at the end of my life, I'm finally
understanding so many of the things I never grasped before. I never got the
meaning behind many of the things that happened in my life; now, I see His
Guiding Hand in many of those events. I see the "why" behind so many
things I used to grumble about now.
Why is there so much suffering in the world? That's our job: to
END that suffering for other people - NOT to sit back and gripe, but to go out
and solve it as His Children, learning to clean up our own messes. Sin was
never supposed to have entered the world, but once it had (and God knew it
would, so...), it became a way for His Children to build our character and
become more like Christ in eradicating its effects. I could go on and on, but that's
the starting point for much of it.
Ephesians 2:8-10 - "For by grace you
have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Don't let anyone tell you that you can EARN your way into
Heaven. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
And the problems in the world are created in Christ for US to perform good
works that we should walk in them. That's our PURPOSE in life.
Thank You, Lord, for giving us all a PURPOSE in life. It's amazing how many people go
through life not realizing they have such an important purpose, spelled out in
black and white for us in Scripture, if we would simply OPEN our Bibles once in
a while and READ the thing!
A month of thanks, for no other reason
than because it’s always a good time to be thankful.
Nov
28. I am thankful for Charlotte Catherine
Peliah Smith, my youngest child. My author. My ball of creativity. She’s
taking a scary story she wrote for class and is writing two more versions of it
- from the perspective of two of the other characters, to reveal new details to
her readers.
Charlotte is my hugger. She reassures me now as much as I
reassure her. She is an amazingly caring person, and not just to me. I’ve
watched her bend herself backwards to help a classmate. Or sibling. Or me. I’ve
watched her seek out the kid no one else was playing with.
Charlotte is my
straight A, straight laced little girl. And she does it without rubbing it in
your face. She is such a remarkable
child.
A month of thanks, notarized in
triplicate. Prayers to the Lord every morning, praises twenty-four seven.
Nov
29. I am thankful for my
sweet little Dorothy Margaret Peliah Smith.
She is my canary in this mine of mine, the one child I can rely on to tell me
what the mood in the room really is. She’s the one who let the cat out of the
bag that my relationship with Dana wasn’t as immediately popular with the kids
as I’d thought - turns out it’s more a fear of change than any resentment of my
choice of partners, but still...
She is amazingly
intuitive. She may not understand the background (the youngest children often
suffer this fate) but she figures out enough to add her humor to the joke. She’s
amazingly funny for an eleven-year old. She’s a talented writer, artist,
actress, student, friend, and more.
Her biggest achievement this year, I think, is the board game
she invented this summer, called “Hairstyles”. It’s such a
unique game - I mean, for example, you roll dice, but THAT isn’t what
determines how you move! We play the game when she’s not around, for Heaven’s
sake! Now, if we can talk her into marketing it....
And I’m pretty partial to her because she likes to find any
excuse I’ll accept to sleep on the couch next to my recliner/bed. No real
reason, except to spend more time next to daddy. Very sweet.
A month of thanks is
coming to a close. Now I can go back to hiding my thankfulness off line, in my
prayers, away from prying eyes.
Nov
30. I am thankful for
love. I am thankful for the life God gave me. I am thankful for Jesus Christ
and His sacrifice on the cross on our behalf, yours and mine. I am thankful for
the purpose my life had. I am thankful for the people I spent my life with. I
am thankful for the places I saw and the experiences I had. I am thankful for
every woman I ever had the privilege of falling in love with, and especially
for every woman who deigned to give me such love in return. I am thankful for
my brother and cousins and aunts and uncles and extended relatives and
semi-relatives and family of all manner I’ve had. I’m thankful for the pets
I’ve had over the years - amazing animals who provided love and stories and
companionship. I am thankful for music education, which provided a career for
me and incomparable learning experiences for thousands of students whose lives
were hopefully improved because of what was shared with them. I am especially
thankful for my three parents, and even more so for my children. May God bless
them throughout the rest of their lives, and carry them Home when the Day of
Reckoning arrives in the very near future.
And most of all, I am
thankful that when I die, I will be in Heaven with my Lord for the rest of
eternity.
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