Our country sets aside one day a year for us to be thankful as a nation. It’s such a part of our culture that many people don’t even realize the significance of the holiday.

It’s not about turkey and all the trimmings, but about being thankful to a wonderful God for all our bountiful blessings.

I expect posting and reading will be light this week while people prepare for their holiday. In the meantime I hope you remember your bounty and thank God for it.

This past weekend we had the blessing of seeing our daughter in law and grandchildren who live in Texas. Her parents flew them in for Thanksgiving and invited us to visit them. We took our older granddaughter with us as the grandchildren are virtually strangers to each other due to the distance and infrequent visits.

If the younger granddaughter had been born one day later she would have been exactly one year younger than the older. You can’t tell it by looking at them because the younger one was very sick when she was born and has inherited the short genes. She’s maybe a little larger than our almost six year old grandson.

My almost eleven year old grandson has finally gotten taller than his grandmother, and that’s just since July.

We had the privilege of taking the children out to eat on Saturday night and enjoying their company and conversation.

I am thankful to live in this wonderful land we call the United States of America. God could have chosen to put me in Bangladesh.

I am so very thankful for my family—those who are still alive and those who have left us for a short time.

I am thankful for every experience in my life, even the bad, because with each experience I have learned something.

I have a wonderful husband and family and I am so thankful for them.

I have made a wonderful friend in Sue and I am very thankful to know her.

Most of all I am thankful for Jesus, Who loved me even when others didn’t, and went through the horror of the death He had on the cross, was buried and resurrected and lives today on the Right Hand of the Father, just as loving and concerned about me as He is about all people.

The story is not just about His death, folks. The real story is His shed blood that washes away our sins and His resurrection and then ascention to Heaven. He hears our prayers, but answers them according to His will. It may not be our will or to our understanding, but I have faith He is doing it for His reasons and I will find out later why.

I don’t lose faith when someone dies because I know death is a part of life and none of us is guaranteed a long life.

I am thankful that I will have eternal life in Heaven where there will be no more tears, no more pain and no more sorrow, and where I can spend eternity in perfect worship of the Perfect Lamb of God.

I would be remiss if I failed to say how thankful I am for our military who are all over this world keeping us safe while risking their own lives. I try to make it a point to go to each one I see and shake their hand and tell them how thankful I am for their service.

I tell each of you today you are very special in a lot of people’s hearts…people you don’t even know, but we love you and pray for your safety and well-being every day.

May God bless each and every one of our military and may He continue to bless this wonderful country He gave us.

Listen to Dolly and her two sisters and two brothers sing this song at a Thanksgiving family gathering:

With all of its shortcomings and its trials and tribulations, this really is a Wonderful World.

It never hurts to have a little bit of history mixed in while listening to the remarkable voice of Sam Cooke.

My fear of heights would never have allowd me to do what you will view in this video. At first I wondered what would prompt anyone to attempt this feat.

Support for the Make a Wish Foundation is good enough for me.

Have we become an apathetic electorate? In many instances I believe we have. The question is, why?

Is it possible this could be the reason?

I’ve often thought that one reason Americans don’t trust their government is that their government doesn’t trust the American people very much. This goes double for the mass media whose sneering contempt for much of their audience is made abundantly clear in the way they cover politics and issues as well as what they choose to program as entertainment on their networks.

Even the 24 hours news nets – with rare exceptions – waste most of the day on trivialities. A story involving some pretty, blond, white woman who disappears or is murdered by her husband will get more attention for days or weeks at a time than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or issues of war and peace with Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, or any other place in the world where informing the people would mean spending more than 3 minutes with both sides shouting back and forth about who is at fault.

No question about it. Just look at the current news cycle. But there’s more where that came from:

We enter an extraordinarily dangerous period in our history hopelessly divided and completely unable to work together on issues vital to our security and economic well being. And fully half of all registered voters will probably not vote in 2008 – mostly out of disgust and loathing for this state of affairs. There is plenty of fault to go around. The problem did not arise on January 20, 2001 nor will it end on January 20, 2009. The question isn’t “Who’s to blame” but rather “What do we do about it?”

We can start by demanding that the elites in media and politics begin to treat the American voter with more respect. A candidate and a government that starts to trust the people a little more will help. But given all that I’ve seen and heard, that day is a long way off.

Trust and respect. Two things many of those in Washington today and those aspiring to the highest office in the land lack in regards to those who have or will send them to govern. No wonder we’re so disconnected, we’re smart enough to know how politicians think.

How many times will we be subjected to this?

Democrats in Congress failed once again Friday to shift President Bush’s war strategy in Iraq, but insisted that they would not let up. Their explanation for their latest foiled effort seemed to boil down to a simple question: “What else are we supposed to do?”

We’ll hear it and read it until the Commanders inform the President there can safely be a drawdown and then they’ll say…see, see, we made him do it. The President caved. No matter their actions could very well harm those in the field they purport to support.

If it weren”t so sad, it might even be funny to see grown men and women behave in this manner.

How ridiculous.

HT:Lucianne