grateful

Well it's suddenly Thanksgiving and I have to make some candied yams. Well not that candied. I don't use marshmellows. Just brown sugar and butter.

So I'm looking for the glass dish I always use for this dish, and I find that sometime since last year it has cracked in two. Now this was a dish that was Richard's  mom's, and I already lost the pie dish I got from her. So this comes as a bad surprise.

Richard says, "Lillian (his mom) wouldn't be upset. She'd say, 'I'm just glad you kids are OK and didn't get hurt.'" But now I have no dish for my yams.

I have her old Corning Ware but it's too small. I'd have to bring two dishes. I have lots of serving dishes so I could cook the yams and then transfer them onto a serving dish but then how to reheat them at my sister's?

What I really should be thinking of is what I'm grateful for. That's what we celebrate isn't it? Being grateful. I'm grateful for so many things. As they say I count my blessings, count them one by one.

So there is my family and friends. My house. My pets. My health. My computer. Richard's jokes. My vacuum. My car.  Food, music, nature, photography, writing, law school, glasses, the internet.

I know there is so much more that I'm missing. Hot showers for examples. The blessing of not being one of the millions of the world's displaced persons. How can we be all fat and happy while so many others are suffering?

I feel that I'm called to do something, but I don't know what. Why am I so forntunate? And  yet why do I have enough personal struggles that I remained chained to an ineffective and small life?

This seems to be the problem for so many of us. We are chained to our small problems and lack the freedom to affect meaningful change.