Take The Time To Say Thank You

I read the columns/blogs of Sean of the South by Sean Dietrich every single day. He is like my devotional read first thing every morning. This morning his particular column was about saying thank you – to anyone and everyone who has done anything for you. To say thank you every day to someone for being kind, or maybe just for being themselves.

I’ll admit it sent my own mind rambling about who all I needed to thank on a daily basis. But not necessarily everyone in my life today – just two folks in particular – my parents.

Thank you both for being the parents that I needed - all the times that I needed you. The hard and stubborn times, the skipping school and getting caught times, the thought I knew it all times, and the thought my heart was breaking times.

For all the taking us on vacations times, the learning trips to places we thought inside our heads we wouldn't like but did – times. The letting me choose red bridesmaids dresses in 1984, when you really thought red was too a bold color for a church wedding.

Thank you for explaining what forgery was in such a way when I was 10 years old and had signed your name to a U-slip (for excessive talking if you can imagine that!) that it would stick with me forever. And thank you for telling me once during another growing-up lesson, "oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive". I have repeated that more times in my life than I care to admit, and fell down a few times from not doing it, when I knew better.

Thank you, Daddy, for the gifts of art that will be with me until I am no longer here myself. They hang from the walls in my home and speak volumes about the love that went into them.

Thank you both for creating me with kindness, maybe a little too much empathy, and many times, a bleeding heart. But mostly, thank you for making me strong. Strong enough to get through all the trials in my life: the wrong marriage making the right babies, the right job working for a difficult man, the very job which made me able to provide for my children on my own. And the strength to know it takes a village to do it right, and not be ashamed to call on that village when I needed to.

And strong enough to take on this second act of my life with both firmness and kindness and to be able to pull from my heart the right parts to get it done with tenderness and tenacity.

Ya’ll are my touchstone in life. You’re the place that I go when I need non-judgmental reinforcements and clear-minded direction. I love you both more than any words that I know how to use to make a sentence - and I always will. You are the parents some kids dream about having, and that you belong to me, makes me more proud than you could ever know.