thanksgiving

I have so much to be grateful for this year: my husband, my family, my amazing friends, my health, my home, my sweet dog, financial stability, the health of my loved ones, and an open heart with which I am learning to recognize and accept God's grace in my life.

It's been a big year with a lot of changes and a lot of inner turmoil and questioning of what my purpose in life is, and, as I reflect on the questions that keep me up most at night ("where am I going?" and "who am I going there with?"), I realize that I am so blessed to be able to ask these questions and to have the luxury of time with which I can start to answer them.

I am also incredibly blessed to have a supportive and loving partner, a person who is working on answering these questions for his own life, someone I can rely on to love me unconditionally as I struggle with these questions, and with whom I can share the journey of becoming. My goal for the end of this year, and for the coming year, is to continue to work on doing what I can, with what I have - to take it one day at a time, to keep sight of my true priorities, to be more accepting of my flaws, to give more to my community, and to put my energy toward the relationships that I value so much (including my relationship with God, and my relationship with myself).

I get so overwhelmed sometimes with the senselessness of the world - the violence, the greed, the corruption, the vapidness, the blatant neglection of the poor, the suffering, and the lonely, the fascination with the grotesque, the pervasive indifference of so many, and the vast inequities in our society - that I forget about the fact that, though I can't do everything that I yearn to do, there are many things I can do, and, that the world will always have a place for people who want to create change within there own sphere of influence (and, that small as that sphere may sometimes seem, it is a very important sphere). I also have to remind myself that, though the world longs for a restoration of balance, there is still so much to be inspired by - that there is still beauty and adventure and passion, action to be taken, and HOPE.

Whoa - a lot heavier of a post than I originally intended it to be, but it feels good to share these thoughts. A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you and yours! Here is my little family on Thanksgiving day.

Love to you all.