If I could have a holiday wish, it would be to stop the holiday insanity that begins earlier and earlier each year. Stop buying stuff that we don’t need, fighting for the best deal, going into debt and to stop listening to the media drive us into a frenzy.

To stop cooking stupid amounts of food that we don’t need and instead spend the day helping others who do not have what they need. There is never a time in the year when the poor feel their poverty more intensly, when a mom or dad feel overwhelmed that their children will feel the pain of that poverty, when the person who lives alone feels that sense of aloneness amplified 10 fold.

I would wish that we not get caught up in the frenzy of buying, instead we get into the frenzy of helping.

Today I am thankful for all the friends and family who have helped me this year. The ones who taught me that I must be more discerning, the ones who sit down and tell me the truth that I might not want to hear, the ones who are willing to forgive, the ones who do not judge, the ones who chose to leave and the ones who chose to stay, the old friends and the new ones.  I am even thankful for those who have been hurtful because I have learned much from them, and those who make me smile and see the humor in it all. There are even those whom I have never met but they have had an impact on my life.

For all the people in my life far and wide, rich or poor, new and old, those I know and those I don’t know yet, I am thankful for you all.

Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Holidays