So here we are back in the thankful season. Getting ready to count our blessings and stuff ourselves. This time of year always gets me to thinking about life in general and I really try to break down what I am thankful for. I usually end up along way from what a normal response would be. Sure I am thankful for all of the obvious things, but what, at this point and time am I really thankful for. I went way out this year and really tried to break it down into what I am going to call “alternatives.” I broke it down this way because we have a lot going on in our life that can at first glance be very negative, disheartening, and downright no fun. In any situation we always have alternatives. I am not going to go as far as saying we always have a choice, but we do always have a choice on how we react, view and deal with the alternatives we are given.

The first thing I did was strip away the things we cannot control. What I mean is that one of my alternatives is that Tammy doesn’t have cancer. I can not control that nor want to. If I sit here and think about all of the ways our life would be different without cancer my thoughts would end up in that negative, disheartening, and downright no fun category. So then what alternatives do I have to be thankful for? To be very frank with you, I am thankful for any alternative. Without any alternatives there is no hope. With no hope you are left with nothing. If I break our life down into our alternatives it is really pretty basic. Keep fighting, or don’t.

So as I sit here and think about what I am thankful for under this perspective many things come to mind. I am thankful that I don’t have enough hours in the day to exercise, I spend that time with Tammy. Not doing anything special, just spending time. I am thankful that I get to find the time and resources to get her where she needs to be when she needs to be there. I am thankful that I get to cook our meals, do our laundry, put the kids to bed. I am thankful that I am the one that gets to hold her in my arms when she is hurting. I am thankful for all these things and a lot more because if I break it down to its most fundamental parts, I am thankful for this alternative.

I wanted to write this because sometimes in life we get so bogged down with things that we forget what we really should be thankful for. So if you sometimes feel like life has really got you down, break down your alternatives. Sometimes you might find that what you are dealing with is not something that should tear you apart. It should remind you of how thankful you are, because sometimes the other alternative is something that you could not live with.