Introducing…Thankful Tuesday!

In my earnest, outgoing, college-is-like-church-camp! freshman year, I met with two friends at seven every morning to pray for about, um, two weeks. (At least we tried.)  In our instituting of the prayer time, we had decided that we needed a day set aside for thanksgiving, a day to ignore our usual requests and simply thank God for all the good things in our lives. And we decided that, of course, it should be on Tuesday. Tuesday gets so little respect. Plus, Thursday would be the obvious choice for thankfulness due to its corresponding “th” sound. We thought we’d shake it up a bit.

Despite the short-lived early morning devotion, “Thankful Tuesday” survived all the way through college. In our effort to make it a phenomenon, we would shout across the lawn to friends between classes, “Happy Thankful Tuesday!” I tried to get t-shirts made (which is really how you start a phenomenon in college), but my commitment to shirts was short-lived.

Even after college, Tuesday remained my day to be thankful until it slowly fizzled into some memory of college bliss. But I’ve been thinking about it lately, feeling like I need some organized thankfulness in my life.  It’s been too easy to feel sorry for myself over the past two weeks. This morning, the virus that knocked me out last week is alive and well in my son and husband (who is presently lying feverish on our bed) and is still lingering in me. I’m sick of being stuck in this apartment full of germs. I’m tired of canceling play dates and keeping August away from kids. And I’m tired of our family going through one Kleenex box per day.

And that is exactly why today is the rebirth of Thankful Tuesday.

So, I’ll start. I’m thankful for coffee. I’m thankful that my son feels good enough to run around playing this morning. I’m thankful that he just brought me his Phillies ball cap and asked me to put it on my head, where it is resting precariously as I type. I’m thankful for neti pots, which I’ve just discovered in this bout of sickness. (Have you used one? The feeling of water flowing through your nostrils is one of the weirdest, most awesome sensations ever.) I’m thankful for my family and thankful that I’m the one who gets to take care of them and wash their dirty sheets and force them to take Tylenol. Because, seriously, as much as I wish they weren’t sick, there’s no one else I’d rather take care of.

What about you? What are you thankful for today?