Today (and everyday) I am thankful for:

• God's everlasting love, grace, mercy, and salvation.
• My wonderful husband, Daniel.
• My amazing family.
• My awesome friends.
• My education and opportunities.
• Our apartment.
• My car.
• My access to good food and water.
• My good health.
• Being able to feel safe and secure where I live.
• Living in a a great country.
• Having the freedom to worhsip God as I choose without persecution.
• All the many, many, many material poessions we have.
• And so much more.

God has blessed me incredibly, and too often I take that for granted. Today as we all celebrate this great holiday, I want to truly be thankful for all that I have been given.

I've been thinking lately about how silly some of the ideas I held on to when I was younger were. I'm not talking about being a little kid either; I mean just in the past few years and back into my teen years. Maybe it's because I'm around so many teens at my internship and can notice how bizarre their thought process can be sometimes. It's amazing to me how just a few extra years under my belt can make me see how illogical some of my own ideas used to be, lol.

One specific incidence was in planning my wedding. I was so certain that I couldn't have two maids-of-honor, because that would just be "weird," nontraditional, and off-balance. I had to pick just one of my friends to give the title; even though in my head I always considered my dear other friend, Veronica, to be in the same, equal role! I think going to Amy's wedding back in July it finally hit me that there was no real reason for me not to have two maids-of-honor. Not that either way was really a "right" or "wrong" choice, but just the fact that I thought I "couldn't" even though that's what I wanted deep down.

Another example would be graduation ceremonies at WCC. When I graduated from WTMC, I chose not to do the WCC Graduation too. I fought with my parents on it, because at the time I thought it would be unnecessary and weird since I was really just graduating from high school and would be graduating from  my "real" college in just a couple years anyway. Looking back now, I kind of wish I would have. I can see that it's a good thing to celebrate all of one's accomplishments and it would have been a neat memory to have (and even to tell to my future children, etc, haha.). Again, this wasn't an issue of "right" or "wrong," but something that I decided not to do because of the fact that I thought it would be weird, etc. Which is kind of a silly reason to do or not do something.

I'm sure there are, of course, lots of other little examples, but these are two that I've been thinking about lately. I really did focus quite a bit on keeping up appearances and being normal (even though I never would have thought or admitted that then)! I'm sure there's things I'm doing now that I will eventually look back on and wonder what I was thinking, ha. As they say, hindsight is 20/20; I guess you just start to gain little pieces of wisdom the older you get and the more experience you have.