Been porch perching this morning entertained by the squirrels chasing each other in the tall old magnolia across the street, spiraling up the tree like a wind-up train climbing a toy mountain. One of them just fell off a limb, landing in a puff of dirt and leaves. Got right back up and ran back up the trunk. Probably fell 15 feet. They are tough little fellas.

The soft cool mornings breeze is composing a beautiful yard symphony with the faint tintinnabulations of the wind chimes. A small pile of brown oak leaves enjoyed a brief ride on a whirlwind and are now chasing each other down the street. Their magnolia leaf friends, joining the chase, are adding their cement slapping percussion beats to the yard symphony. A chorus of cussing chickadees and a choir of tirading titmice are chiming in with their songs. I love an interesting yard symphony. A loud train whistle is wailing now and has silenced the morning symphony.

Father Sky entertained his men friends in his library today handing out expensive cigars to Old Man Winter and Old North Wind. His friends lit their cigars, sipped their Jim Beam bourbon, and overcast the sky in thick cigar smoke clouds. I wonder what they discuss when they gather. Do they know they add layers of gray and white and purple shaded beauty to the overcast sky? Mid-afternoon the sun peeked through a small opening of clouds looking like a flashlight beam on a foggy morning. Made me remember reading with a flashlight under a tent of bed covers as a child, staying up late to finish reading a novel, quickly and quietly turning off the flashlight if I heard my daddy walking around.

Old North Wind wanted a window opened in the library and his exhale of smoke closed the sun’s window and the sky remained overcast most of the day. Late afternoon Father Sky said goodbye to his friends and the clouds moved slowly away giving the sky canvas over to Mother Nature and her watercolor brushes.

I peeked out the lady den windows at sunset and saw the sun resting on a honey colored horizon. The sun was dressed in an orange silk gown, her rays billowing out in the colors of a distant wildfire. As I turn away to walk to the kitchen to check on my supper cooking, I see Father Sky offer his hand to the sun and together they tap danced down the horizon taking the light of the mysterious dusk with them. As their dance ended nighttime began.

Been pondering today on gratitude and thankfulness trying to define them. I think thankfulness is an emotion, an appreciation for all the wonderful things in our lives. We’re grateful for goodness in our lives and that goodness fosters thankfulness. I think we can have thankfulness in our lives when we see God’s grace in the world around us, when we live with an appreciation for our blessings, sharing our faith with others.

I think gratitude is a mindset of realizing the blessings in life, gifts from a loving God. One of the hardest lessons to learn is to realize we can’t have everything we want. But we can be grateful for what we do have. “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow” (Beattie, 1990). I love that definition of gratitude.

Bible scripture tells us to worship God through thankfulness, recognizing our blessings with grateful hearts. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 reads, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I think God commands us to be thankful through Bible scripture. Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.”

I hear the night’s lonely train whistle echoing down the metal tracks, moaning in time to the clickety clackety of the metal wheels on the steel railroad rails. Trains sound sad at night, I imagine them wailing for the lost love of their cabooses. Loneliness is such an overwhelming sense of being lost and alone. We all crave human contact but we can be lonely in a crowd of people and we can be isolated in our families. Psalm 34:18 reads, “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

We all suffer broken hearts and lose our breath when life punches us in the guts. I believe God is always besides us, holding us till our hearts are mended, giving us breaths of fresh air when we need them. We have to ask God through our prayers for what we need. God wants us to ask for help because he’s our Heavenly Father. No want or need is too trivial for our prayers. “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy will be the fullest joy,” John 16:24.

God wants us to lead a life full of joy. He wants us, his children, to live happy lives but we have to put God first in our lives, leading a life of Christian example, bringing others to Christ through our words and deeds. We have to be willing to trust God, to be obedient in following the path God chooses for us. We have to live our lives with gratitude and thankfulness.

“I am happy because I’m grateful. I choose to be grateful. That gratitude allows me to be happy.” — Will Arnett