This month of November, I didn’t start off on good footing for keeping up with daily posts of things for which I am thankful. I love to read what others post each day on their Thanksgiving list. I think it’s one good thing that come with Facebook. We have an opportunity to encourage each other and speak positive things into the world of technology

Having blown it for listing something good each day, I decided to make a list of my own. Surely I could think of 30 things (one for each day of the month) for which I am thankful. When I got to 30, I was just getting warmed up. I thought perhaps I could think of 50 things.

I didn’t want to list only the ordinary things like faith, friends, and family. I wanted to dig deep and take time to be grateful and appreciate the life I’ve been given. When I hit 75, I was all in for listing 100. By that number, I had slowed down, but made it to 102 before I ran out of time.

Like everyone else, I have happy days and sad. I have wonderful things happen in my life and also face challenges. But there is never a time in my life where the things I have for which to be thankful don’t outweigh the difficulties I may be facing.

Faith is a strong component of my life and when I am reflecting with gratitude, it always leads me to God’s many blessings in my life. Truly I am thankful for every good thing present in my life and I believe they all come to me because of God’s great love for me.

Even without the faith factor, taking time to appreciate our lives and to adopt an attitude of gratitude is very important. Making a list in our head or on paper helps us put things in perspective. When we count the good, it gives us hope for the future.

Thanksgiving has always been a special time of year in my life. When I was a small child and all the way through high school, I watched the Macy’s Day Parade on WGN in Chicago while the aroma of my mother’s good cooking filled the house. It was a holiday from school and the launch of the Christmas season, of dreaming about what surprises might be waiting for me under the tree on Christmas morning.

When I went away to college, it was very difficult to get home for the holidays at Thanksgiving, then two weeks later go back for Christmas break. One of my close friends in college, Sarah Boggs, took me home with her and her family became my home away from home. For years after I graduated and through my married years, we would return to the Bogg’s hunting cabin on top of a mountain in McCreary County. While the men went out to deer hunt, the women would stay behind at the cabin. The older ladies got the meal together while the younger women hiked, and gathered things from the woods for decorating the cabin. We did our cooking at home and brought it with us so we’d be free to roam the mountain.

Time has a way of bringing change. Sarah and her husband live far away. Her parents have passed, and someone else now owns the cabin. Thanksgiving has transitioned to being a time where I do the cooking, my mom brings the dressing, and we treasure every year we have together with mom, dad, brother, me, and sometimes my son and his children.

Thanksgiving always brings with it sweet memories of Thanksgivings past. With my house already decorated for Christmas, and groceries gathered in for making dinner, I have an abundance of God’s blessings for which to give thanks.

Reach longtime Enterprise columnist Judith Victoria Hensley at judith99@bellsouth.net or on Facebook. Check out her blog: One Step Beyond the Door.