Day 2.

What technology are you grateful for?

I was planning on saying I was grateful for cellular phones and the way they connect us, but suddenly I don’t think that’s what I want to put. I am grateful for that, but I think I am more grateful for photographs.

I love photographs. I also love video but photos are so convenient. I love taking photos, saving photos, and looking at photos. I love looking at other people’s photos on facebook, instagram, and snapchat. I love finding a photo of my ancestors and thinking about how they lived, what they thought, what they did. And the incredible photos of people I’ll never meet and places I’ll never go? I’ve experienced a thousand lifetimes looking at the photographs of others. Cities, deserts, the ocean, even outer space…photographs have taken me there.

I love that I can look at pictures of people I have lost and I can remember them. Even if that person isn’t in my life anymore for whatever reason, I can still look back and remember, and photographs help with that. I wish I had more pictures of those I have lost. Maybe that’s what drives me to take so many, and save so many.

Not much more to say about that. But I am incredibly grateful for photographs.

So I decided to do this Thirty Days of Gratitude thing. My friend Donna posted this on her facebook and I absolutely LOVED the idea. See, I’ve been really keeping my focus on being thankful and praising God in all circumstances, even when it’s something I would categorize as “bad,” and it has helped me in more ways that I can say. The idea is from 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus” and Romans 5:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” So even if things seem to be going lousy, I remember to have joy in all things because it’s all working together for good, even if I don’t understand it or see how. So it’s a “let go and let God” kind of thing, really.

Anyway, it’s working for me. Most of the time. And so when November rolled around and my facebook posse began listing the things they were thankful for, I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do. It seemed like if I did the biggest ones – God, family, friends, health, etc. – it would be the same things I’d done in Novembers past. But this list was different. And I like it. I like that it’s showing me things to be thankful for that I don’t usually think about.

So here’s the list. This is the same one Donna posted, but I went and googled and found it on this site: Text My Journal (although I don’t know if it originated here for sure).

Now. My thanks. I’m actually writing this on Nov. 2 but I’m going to postdate it to Nov. 1, which would be sooo sneaky if I hadn’t just said what I’m doing.

What smell are you thankful for today?

Today I am thankful for the smell of a wood burning stove. When I smell that scent, I am instantly transported back to my grandparents’ house in Stilwell, Oklahoma. This was my dad’s parents, and they had a place on forty acres that my grandpa built himself. There was a stove in the living room and the house always seemed to have that scent in it, even in the summertime. Maybe that is just my memory, or maybe it was embedded in the walls and carpet after so many years. But when I smell that, it’s family and cousins and dominoes and walks out to the pond or out into the woods. It’s playing on the metal swingset and climbing on the doghouse and poking around the the barn. Reading Grandma’s book of headlines from the Tulsa World and hiding in the bushes with cousins. Watching Grandma cook and going with Grandpa to look at his garden or cows. Playing hide and go seek and sitting at the kids table for Thanksgiving and loving every minute of it. It was amazing and simple and perfect, every time. And every time I smell a wood burning stove, I’m there.