Thankful

I know it is corny. I know it is cliche. I know it is predictable. But I am doing it anyway. Here is what I am thankful for on this Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for my health and my family.
Yes, I said my health.

Here is the way I see it. To avoid sugar coating anything, this is as brutally honest as I can be. I am dying. I have end stage liver disease and I am nearing liver failure. So that may not sound like something to be thankful for, but follow me here.

I feel good. I wake up every morning in my own bed and not a hospital bed. Aside from the occasional life threatening infection, I am able to go about my life as if nothing is wrong. Yes I feel tired. Yes I have eyes as yellow as the sun. But I feel good. Each time I see the doctors, they are amazed at how well I look. Just by looking at my blood counts, they would think that I should be laid up in a hospital bed somewhere. But I feel good enough that I will be able to sit down today with my family and enjoy a Thanksgiving Day feast. That, I am thankful for.

Which brings me to my next point. I am beyond thankful for my family, and I include close friends in that category because when we get together, it feels the way family should.

I am thankful for my family whom have flown down to spend the Holiday with my wife and I.

I am thankful for my wife's family, who have taken me in from day one, and have continued to do so every step of the way.

I am thankful for a small group of friends that I have from high school. We have had more adventures and misadventures than I can count over the years and despite being 1,000 miles apart, I still get to see them (and their wives and girlfriends and even kids) several times a year.

I am thankful for our friends from college, who although we do not get to see each other that often, every time we do, it feels like college again.

I am thankful for my friends who I have met through work, who made every day at work, a day to look forward to.

I am thankful for all of our friends that my wife as made in her wide range of activities, and how they all have been there for both of us in the best and worst of times.

I am thankful for my large church family who always seem to make us feel that everything will be OK.

I am thankful for our Small Group, who have been with us every step of the way during this difficult time. I am thankful for their support, because without it, my wife and I would be in a very different, and much more tragic place.

Above all of this however, I am thankful for my wife. I mentioned in the introduction to this blog that I begin and end everyday with a prayer, and that prayer always begins with thanking God for that day. The second part of that prayer, twice a day, every day, is thanking God for putting my wife in my life. She is quite simply, the best thing that has ever happened to me. Every good thing that has happened to me since I met her over ten years ago, has been because of her. She is my rock, my inspiration and my motivation for being a better person. She is the reason that I will survive this. She is the reason that I am looking forward to beginning my new life after this transplant. She is the reason for all that I am.

And of course, I am thankful to God, for giving me this day and everyday, and for giving me the chance to live and experience each one.