Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, and in the spirit of being thankful, I thought I'd share with you all the many many blessings I am thankful for this year.  Let me just say before I start that I am sure that I will forget something, as I am so incredibly blessed, but I will list as much as I can at the moment....

1.  I am thankful for my Daddy.  He is the most amazing father a girl could ask for, and as we were discussing just this morning, great dads are hard to find.  He has been so patient with me through the last few years as I've wandered from job to job and tried to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and I appreciate so much his unconditional love for me.  

2.  Along those same lines, I am thankful for my step-mom.  She has made my daddy so incredibly happy after losing my mama, and I will always be thankful to her for that.  I am also thankful for her patience with me as I try to acclimate myself to this new family and new life that I never expected to have.  I am thankful that I am growing to love her, and that she is growing to love me.  And I pray that that continues for many more years. 

3.  As I look towards my 5th holiday season without my mommy, I am thankful for the wonderful life that she lead, and the wonderful relationship we had.  I am thankful for the woman she raised me to be, and for the 23 years I had with her.  

4.  I am thankful that at 28 years old I am still able to enjoy time with all of my grandparents.  I am thankful that I get to have dinner with them regularly, and that I truly enjoy my time with them.  I am thankful that they are all in (relatively) good health, and that I have many more years of good memories to celebrate with them.  

5.  I am thankful for the Ruppel family.  I can honestly say that they are 7 reasons why I have survived the last five years.  I am thankful for the summer I got to live in their home and really get to know Daddy John and Mama Joanie.  And for the 5 extra siblings I have in Chris, Bebba, KT, Nick, and Zoe-girl.  My oldest and dearest friends.

6.  I am thankful for my sister-in-law, Missy.  She came into our family so easily, and loves my (sometimes difficult) brother unconditionally.  She is by far one of my best friends.  I look forward to her phone calls and spending time with her.  I can't imagine our family or my life without her, and I am so thankful that my brother chose his wife so brilliantly. 

7.  I am thankful for a great group of friends that support me and lift me up and have loved me through many stages in my life. Friends from childhood (Jilly-bean!), high school (Liz, Emily, Brianne, Andrea, Krystal), College (My Megs!), Cincinnati (Tricia and Robyn), and newer friends like Shashy, Boo, Kate, and Rhonda - I am so blessed.  God sent you all to me for a reason, and I could never thank him enough.  

8.  I am thankful for this new journey I am embarking on.  I am thankful to have finally found a career path that I am sooooo excited about.  To feel like I am finally using the brain that God blessed me with.  I am looking forward to finally being challenged and working hard and seeing a result.  I am thankful to know that I will be making a difference in so many lives.  I am thankful that God never gave up on me, and never stopped leading me, even when I wasn't paying attention.  

9.  I am thankful for my "nieces" and "nephews" and my God-son.  I don't see them as much as I would like to, but each of them - Molly, Leah, Gabriel, Cameron, and Carter - has been a huge blessing to me.  I look forward to continuing to watch them grow and learn and to be awed by how amazing they all are.  And I look forward to loving Baby Reagan like my own as well! 

10.  Last but DEFINITELY not least - I am thankful for A.  I am thankful to have a found a man who loves me as I have always wanted to be loved.  I am thankful to be able to love him and to be myself and to be cherished for who I am.  I am thankful for what he is teaching me about love, and life, and myself.  I am thankful that at the end of the day, next to him is ALWAYS where I want to be.  I am thankful for his support of my desire to go to med school and become a doctor.  I am thankful for the future we are dreaming of together, and the life we are building right now.  He inspires me every day with his patience and perseverance, and I can't imagine loving anyone more than I love him.  

That is the Top 10.  I'm sure if I sat here long enough, I would come up with at least 10 more things to be thankful for.  I didn't mention my aunts and uncles and cousins, my health, my home, or TCU football - all things that I am extremely thankful for as well :)  But on this day when we pause to say "Thank you" to a God that created each of us and loves us unendingly and unconditionally - I wanted to take a moment to write it down.  Because I have been incredibly blessed, and I don't ever want to forget that.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 

Anticipating "Soon"

Do you remember being a kid at Christmas?  Do you remember how you would go to bed as early as possible in the hopes that sleeping would make the morning come faster, only to find that you couldn't sleep, no matter how hard you tried?  I remember being so excited to see what Santa (and my Mom and Dad) had brought me that there were no visions of sugar plums dancing in my head on Christmas Eve! 

There aren't very many things that get me that excited anymore.  Even Christmas, which I still get childishly giddy over, has lost some of its sparkle in the years of growing up and my changing family.  

I started thinking about "waiting time" today, and how immeasurably long the hours of Christmas Eve night felt to me as a child.  I was working with a client today who kept asking for her mom to come home.  I kept saying "She'll be home soon," which meant "in a couple of hours".  But to this (very impatient) child, two hours was not "soon".  And this realization brought to mind some of my favorite memories from when I was a kid.  

Two of my favorite times of the year came during the summer and around Christmas when the Ruppel family would pass through from Texas on their way to visit family in Illinois.  The Ruppels were, and still are, my very favorite people on earth.  They are my oldest friends, and I can always count on outrageously fun times being had and great memories being made when our families get together. So as their visits drew closer we would count down the days, anxiously awaiting their arrival.  Then the great day would finally come and it would be spent cleaning the house, making the beds with new sheets and blowing up air mattresses.  (Side Note - John and Joanie are the only people on earth I would happily have given up my bed for.  I hate sleeping on air mattresses or the floor, but if it meant having the Ruppel family in my house, I would have slept on a bed of nails!) The day was spent vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes and cleaning the bathrooms.  But there would invariably come a time in the day when I would ask - "Mom, how much longer?" I just thought I would burst with the waiting!  And she would say - "They'll be here soon." Soon to her was, of course, in a few hours.  That was NOT soon to me!  I think back on it now and realize that my mom must have been frantic to make sure everything was done and perfect for her dear friends' arrival, and a few hours was "soon" to her.  But to me, waiting all day (and sick of cleaning) it just wasn't soon enough.  The thing is though, they always arrived eventually, and then the next day or two was spent soaking up as much of their presence as possible, and it was always over too soon.  That last day would come, and we'd be wishing time would slow down so that the visit didn't have to end.  Its funny how that works. 

I have never been a patient person, and probably never will be, but my idea of when "soon" is has definitely changed as I've gotten older.  I still look forward to visiting the Ruppels every fall (hurry up October!!) and definitely count down the days to Christmas, but it is different.  Now I find myself wishing more often that time would slow down, not speed up.  I'm getting older, and so are the people around me, and I wish that I could slow down time and get a few more things done before 30 gets here, or spend a few more hours with my grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and cousins before they are taken from me, or we grow up and grow apart.  I wish that Zoe, Gabriel and Cameron, Molly and Leah, and Carter would stop growing up so fast.  All of this wishing that time would slow down leads me to realize that what I really need to do is take advantage of the time I DO have.  Be thankful that today I can call any one of my grandparents, my dad, my aunts, uncles, or cousins and tell them that I love them.  Be thankful for the things I have accomplished before I turn 30, and be thankful that turning 30 is not the end of the world. (Although I'll be honest, some days it feels like it might be...) And I will continue to be thankful that my friends share their babies with me, and let me be the best Aunt Kiki I know how to be.  

So... all that is to say this - Although my idea of "soon" has definitely changed as I get older, and my timeline is now measured in months and years instead of hours and days, there is still so much that I look forward to.  And that, I've decided, is what makes life worth living.