Being an old Mississippi boy before I was an old Kentucky man I have found that even taking off my shoes I don’t have enough digits to count all my blessings. And, sadly, my memory is bad enough that there are some wonderful blessings that I don’t even remember.
As Twila and I were cleaning out a condo of a dear friend who had passed we decided it would be a good time to do some cleaning out of some of our old stuff as well. We had boxes in the attic, boxes under the house and boxes in closets… some that had not been opened since three or four moves ago. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw the boxes away without at least peeking inside to see what they held.
One box contained many old newspaper clippings from papers I’ve led over the years and as I shuffled through them I came across one entitled “Counting our Christmas blessings.” I thought… “How timely.”
The column was from the Glasgow Daily Times where I was publisher at the time. The date was December 22, 2004… a time when I was a lot heavier, had much more hair and was so much younger. It was a time only months after Twila had been in a car crash that had changed our lives in a dramatic way and that she survived only through the grace of God.
Due to the stress and strain from dealing with Twila’s injuries and all the related life challenges such an event causes I had not tried to decorate our home for Christmas… something we have always been very big on doing. Somehow Twila’s older sister found out I wasn’t decorating and she, not being the shy one in the family, called to tell me I was an “idiot and Twila needed those decorations up to help her continue to get well. You are lucky she’s still alive and you better count your blessings and get off your butt and decorate that house.”
It didn’t take me long to flash back to a previous newspaper job years before where I found myself counting my blessings, then on to the Glasgow job… again counting my blessings and finding this old copy of my column stopped me in my tracks. I’m not happy about getting old… er… but when I realize how blessed I am and what a great life I’ve had and, God willing, will have in the future it makes me realize I still have a lot of blessings to count.
So, as I spend time this year putting up our thousands of lights and a tree… or three… I will end this with the last two paragraphs of that 21-year-ago column.
“If you have not taken the time to count your blessings this holiday season, please stop long enough to do so. Then do something more important… remember the reason we celebrate Christmas… the source of all the blessings in our lives. Happy Holidays from a reformed Scrooge.”
May God bless you and yours this year and for many years to come and give you many great reasons to count your blessings! Merry Christmas.
