Thanksgiving on the Blah Days

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This morning I lectured my husband about the shelf life of cheese.

Yes. Cheese. Because out of all the important things we’re doing together—serving God, raising kids, owning a home—I needed to make sure that we were on the same page about when cheese is edible and when it is not. And that was the high point of the morning.

It’s easy for me to give thanks when things are good. And though it’s not necessarily easy for me to give thanks when things are bad, I do tend to reach out to God in those times. Not always in the right way or for the right reasons, but the struggle reminds me how much I need him.

It’s in the blah days that I have trouble. Nothing is wrong today. My family is healthy, nothing pressing is visible on the horizon. But it’s only 9:30, and everything so far has been more difficult than I planned. The fifteen minute project took an hour, the quick trip to the grocery store had to be done in the pouring rain, my husband did not understand that just this once I was going to suspend my obsessive preoccupation with food-borne illness.

(I have the proud distinction of being one of only a handful of people in Missouri who contracted Listeria food poisoning in 1994. They never discovered where I got it. I was on a first-name basis with the head of the St. Louis County health department for a while. I’m entitled to my crazy.)

(Unless I feel like you’re implying that I haven’t cleaned out the refrigerator in a while, then you best just put the cheese in your scrambled eggs and be quiet about it.)

I should always be thankful. And I am. I’m thankful that the project got done. I’m thankful that getting food is so easy that I think a rainy parking lot is a burden. I’m thankful that my husband remained civil even though my insistence that the cheese was still good contradicted everything I’ve said about food safety over the last 18 years.

It’s important to express gratitude. Everything we have comes from the hand of a good God, and we need to honor him by giving thanks. Especially when we don’t really feel like it.

This post appeared on my previous blog in 2012.