Step One

November is officially over. Only by a couple hours as I am awake in the middle of the night, perhaps because Sawyer just randomly woke up, walked into the bathroom and picked up the hand soap, or because there is something on my heart. I know the latter is the real reason, but can we also hope my child is not starting a new sleepwalking trend. :-)

All month long, I wanted to sit down and write my 'thankful for..." post and well, you can see it didn't happen. Then I started to feel guilty, like I missed my only opportunity to do it. Alas, I am wide awake at 3:00am on December 1st, catching up on my devotions (car duty REALLY throws this girl off), deleting the 50 "cyber Monday" emails I didn't even open, checking in on my blogger friends, and inquiring on the Times News site to find out what time the parade starts in the morning, when I stumble upon a column written by J. Mark Fox that reminds me of this important truth:

"The word says these three things are the will of God for you who are in Christ Jesus: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances."

To me, that was a nudge from the Big Guy saying, "Suzanne, it doesn't matter that you didn't post this on Thanksgiving, you can do it anytime!"

Mr. Fox goes on to give three steps to developing a heart of thanksgiving.

1. Make a list of the top ten things or people on your "I am thankful for" list.

2. Thank God for each one of your top ten.

3. Tell the people on your list how much you are thankful for them. They need to hear it. We need to say it.

So friends, since I love lists and can't seem to get anything done without them lately, I will use Mr. Fox's approach to tackle sharing with you, my heart of Thanksgiving.

Step One:

My Top Ten
1. My Almighty God
2. My boys
3. My family
4. My church family
5. My friends, old and new
6. My Roadrunner Rockers
7. My Facebook friends
8. My sisters in pink
9. My Cheerleaders
10. My new normal

The list could go on and on and in my heart it wilI, but for now I have completed step one and I have some long overdue thank you's to write. My plan is to dedicate a post to each of my top ten. I would like to say it will all happen in 10 days, but the reality is, it won't! I do hope you'll keep checking back because if you read this blog then you are a part of my top ten and since I am almost a year behind on actual thank you cards, I hope you'll accept my thank you blogs in the mean time.

**So after publishing this, I noticed that it says November 22, not sure what is going on. It is in fact December 1 and since I have already confessed to not posting on Thanksgiving, I will stick with my story! :-)