Gratitude

The sermon today was on gratitude. Sister F. told a fabulous story about a man who woke up and found himself wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper - his life was a gift! Next to him was his gift-wrapped wife - he'd been given a wife! In walked his two kids (in wrapping paper, of course), then he saw his gift-wrapped light switch, faucet (clean water!) and oh - a shower! With hot water! And look, he got a briefcase - he had a job! And a car! And even good food! So many wonderful Christmas presents!

This story went really well in ASL, and I have to say, Sister F is a wonderful story teller. We've been encouraging our kids to pay attention in Sacrament meeting, and this one really caught the eyes of at least the older kids. I felt real gratitude for that!

Friday night, Lige's bike was stolen. He'd lost his bike helmet, so he left his bike locked up at the school, and we forgot to go pick it up. When we went the next day, we found the broken lock on the ground. It was so depressing. We've had at least 10 bikes stolen in the 10 years we live here. And this was a nice bike, which was Lige's primary mode of transportation. I was feeling angry and frustrated. And then Marriner said something that just changed my whole perspective. "Well, our son had his bike stolen, but at least our son wasn't out stealing bikes."

I thought of some mom out there whose son was out who-knows-where (well, I know where - at the high school, with a hammer, thinking he was so clever for breaking the lock on that bike) and how all her hopes and dreams for him seem to be going down the drain as he makes worse and worse decisions. I guess having a bike stolen isn't that bad.

And as I thought about it more, I realized that actually, we've had a lot of blessings to help replace all these bikes that have been stolen. We've hardly ever paid for our kids' bikes - most of them are given to us, or Marriner gets a bike someone is throwing out that he can repair. So I can't really complain.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Praise be to God for his bountiful blessings to all of us.