Thanksgiving Blessings

This year, Thanksgiving falls on November 25. A year ago, November 25 marked the day before Thanksgiving, the day that I brought Mr. AOW home after he had spent ten long weeks in two hospitals and a skilled nursing facility as a result of the brain hemorrhage he suffered on September 15, 2009.

I had to move heaven and earth to get Mr. AOW released from that nursing home. And life in this household was difficult in the extreme for the next several months. If not for The Merry Widow, who came up for six weeks to help us, I think that I would have collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

Yes, Mr. AOW has made phenomenal progress. Our living room is less like a hospital room now although we still have the hospital bed and the bedside potty chair in place. Mr. AOW simply cannot get out of bed without lift assistance, nor can he make the trek to our bathroom in time. Our new normal certainly is much unlike our previous normal. The isolation problem continues for both Mr. AOW and me.

As I think back to a year ago, however, I realize that I can count many blessings, only a few of which you can find listed below:

1. Mr. AOW is no longer incontinent. No more five loads of laundry a day! And let me tell you that I simply cannot handle "heavy" diaper changes well at all. I literally don't have the stomach for it.

2. Both of us get a full night's sleep every night since August.

3. Mr. AOW can use his cell phone with consistency and accuracy. Furthermore, his speech issues have resolved.

4. Mr. AOW can travel! Provided that he has assistance, particularly with getting his affected left leg inside the vehicle, he can get into and out of the car.

5. Eating across the table from Mr. AOW is no longer a nasty experience. He has certainly learned to use his one good hand, not his dominant hand taken way by the stroke, to feed himself without slopping up the entire eating space.

6. Mr. AOW is no longer a Weeble that falls down. In fact, these past few months, Mr. AOW has almost completely regained sitting balance and is getting close to achieving perfect standing balance. Balance is a big thing! It allows for him to do his own own scrubbing in the shower once I get him in there and turn on the water.

7. Mr. AOW's thinking processes and memory skills are his original normal. For example, if I need to fix a little something on the car, he can tell me how to accomplish the task, no matter how many steps are involved.

Certainly, Mr. AOW and I were thankful last Thanksgiving when he came home after those long ten weeks. During that time and the hardest days following his return home, we learned just how much we love each other. After over three decades of marriage, we had been taking each other for granted. We take nothing for granted now.

Mr. AOW and I are even more thankful this Thanksgiving as we count our many blessings from the Lord. We await more of His blessings.

A blessed Thanksgiving to all who stop by this site. And may you count your blessings! Believe me, even during the most trying of times, we truly do have bountiful blessings.

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I Couldn't Resist Posting This Turkey

Don't let it ruin your appetite for the coming day of Thanksgiving:



Hat tip to Ron Russell who commented as follows at his blog:

It will soon be that time again, the time to pardon the White House turkey; but the biggest turkey at 1600 Pennsylvania ave will not be pardoned by the American people for him its the chopping block in 2012!!!! We've had quite enough of his arrogant strut!!!

Note: This is not my Thanksgiving-holiday post.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

(Note to family and friends: The most recent update on Mr. AOW is here)


Truly, our blessings are too numerous to count!

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.

For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations.

(Psalm 100:4-5)

"Thanksgiving" by Edgar Guest:

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Give Thanks

Abraham Lincoln was our first President to make Thanksgiving Day a national holiday. He probably set the observance in late November so as to correlate the holiday with the date of the Mayflower's anchoring (November 21, 1620, by the modern Gregorian calendar but November 11, 1620, by the Julian calendar used by the Pilgrims).

Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation reads as follows:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A. Lincoln

In keeping with above words of President Lincoln, who was in 1863 going through a troubled time with the burdens of civil war and the responsibilities of leadership, let us meditate upon our blessings, too numerous to count — no matter how many difficulties 2008 has brought to our lives.

May this Thanksgiving be a special time for each and every one of you!

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PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: Participate in the Fourth Annual Carnival of Christmas! Guidelines here.

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The Virginia Thanksgiving Story

The above photo comes from PigPardon.com, which also provides a little tune. All in fun? Sort of. Nevertheless, according to this article in the November 20, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, the Pilgrims-and-Indians story doesn't accurately reflect the origins of Thanksgiving, those true origins having been emphasized only once before in the 1963 Thanksgiving address given by President John F. Kennedy.

The following is the brief story of the Virginia Thanksgiving story (emphases mine):

In the Virginia story,...Capt. John Woodlief, a survivor of the Jamestown settlement's "starving time" who had returned to England, set sail from Bristol with 37 other settlers on the good ship Margaret to seek their fortune in the New World. After a violent storm blew them off course, they waded ashore Dec. 4, 1619 at what is now Berkeley Plantation [web site]. They opened their orders from their backers, which stated that they were to drop to their knees immediately and give thanks. Their landing date was to "be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God."

No one knows if they had anything other than old ship rations to eat. Historians surmise that they might have supped on roasted oysters and Virginia ham. The settlers didn't stick around long enough to write it down or develop a tradition: They were wiped out in a Powhatan Indian uprising in 1622. From there, the Virginia Thanksgiving story faded from view, save for a handful of die-hard groups that have been hosting a celebration at Berkeley for decades.

Quite an ignominious end for that particular group of settlers. No wonder that the story isn't often told.

According to the Washington Post article, academia and politics played a role in how we today perceive the origins of the holiday we're celebrating this week:

Up north is where most influential early Colonial historians lived and wrote extensively about the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock. Up north is where President Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, sought to bring the country together by creating a national holiday, to be called Thanksgiving. And thus the great harvest feast of turkey, pumpkins, corn, beans and squash that the pious Pilgrim families shared with their friendly native neighbors was enshrined as the official American story. (It's not like Lincoln was going to pick a site in the enemy land of Virginia.)

Native Virginian and ham lover though I may be, I don't much care about any "dispute" as to the origins of the holiday we're celebrating this week. The real meaning of Thanksgiving lies in the heart.

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