“I’m grateful for food.”
This has been my oldest son’s response the last few days when I say the “night night prayer” (basically the Guardian Angels prayer) and ask him what he’s grateful for.
“Food.”
I still remember so clearly when he was just learning how to eat solid foods. Unlike my twins, he gobbled everything up. He’s tremendously more picky now, but his love of food and odd combinations (like apple sauce squeezed out on his tiny sandwiches made from lunchables) has not diminished.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m grateful for?” I nudged him. He usually does without prompting.
“I already know what you are grateful for.”
“Oh really?” I said surprised.
“Me.”
He said the word with a big air of “duh!” but I didn’t mind. The fact that through any trials and tribulations we have had this year he still knows that I’m most thankful for him… and that he knows it like it’s “old news”? That made my mom heart very happy.
Today we might not be our best. We might get frustrated with our loved ones or say the wrong thing. We might forget an assignment a child needed for school or realize we forgot about an appointment in our calendar until it was too late. We may fail. We may fall. Whatever happens that throws us off our games today, let us remember there is always something we can hold tight to.
God is always grateful for us.
God is grateful for us in that “duh!” way that we can accept as “old news.” It has always been true and will always be true no matter what trials or tribulations seem to get in the way.
My prayer this morning is that we can enter into our days with the deep seeded knowledge that someone is always grateful we are here. May we pay it forward by letting someone else know, over and over until is bland and ordinary, that we are grateful for them as well.
