Giving Thanks in All things

This week I am going along with our Thanksgiving book, The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere, and taking a moment to share things that I personally am thankful for.

1. Being far from many of our friends and family, makes us appreciate them more and make a greater effort to continually build our relationships.
2. Being away from the land where we were born, makes us see benefits to living there that may be taken for granted as well as benefits to living here and learning about a new culture.
3. Some of our favorite foods being harder to come by, leads us to appreciate them more when we do have them, and find new food we like.
4. Having to work to communicate clearly in a difficult new language, makes us think more about what we are trying to communicate all of the time, and hopefully warding off Alzheimer's as well.
5. Having only squatty potties, makes us grateful, we don't have to go outside, that our two older boys can flush for themselves, and is giving everyone strong thighs.
6. No central heat, really low heating bill.
7. Not being able to buy something we're used to being able to purchase easily, leads us make and fix more things ourselves.
8. Things that break a lot, lots of opportunity to practice handyman skills.
9. Seeing those with less, makes us appreciate what we have all the more.
10. Having an unconventional life, has given us many unconventional blessings.

By the way I don't always have such a good attitude about all these and other things. I am quite human, definitely get grumpy far more than I'd like to admit, and still very much a work in progress.