How Do You Say Thank You

Thinking on this time of year brings out many an emotion for each one of you that may read this.  And the spectrum of emotions can range– year to year, day to day, shoot–minute to minute– if you have little ones at home. (And I’m so sorry that Mothers Morning Out and school is letting these monkeys out of their cages for what might be an eternity.  Or about 12 days, but still.  Close enough to eternity.) That gamut can range from joy, excitement, delight, stress, anger, sadness, exhaustion…I mean, you know them all.  You probably say “yes” to every one of them.  It’s just a weighty time of year.  And wait-y.  Again, those with the kids feel me on this one.  “No, you may NOT open a present yet! You have to WAIT until Christmas!” And the weighty part is literal as well as figurative in my corner of the world.  All the calories come home for Christmas.  Home being my butt and gut.  All the ones I attempted to send off to boot camp throughout the year–or at least the couple of weeks before I knew I had to get in a bathing suit (with a cover up that more resembles a uniform for a sack race) in public.  Seriously though, there are a lot of feels to feel at Christmas time.

Which brings me to this feel I’m emoting right now: indebtedness.  And no, not feeling that for the money that I owe on my Capital One card, nor the $10 due the room mom for teacher gifts, and not even to the creator of poopourri (though that person deserves a million dollars in small bills).  No.  This indebtedness is such that I couldn’t repay it in this lifetime if I worked three jobs and fed my kids only ramen noodles for the rest of the time they are under my roof.  In fact, it couldn’t even be “repaid” because there is no monetary value to place on it.

For many that know me and my family, you know that my father-in-law recently received a life-saving and life-giving lung transplant.  The story of the journey that concluded with the transplant is nothing short of a miracle and one not to be hidden under wraps.  However, that entire narrative is for a different time and post, and perhaps not even for me to share, but rather for him or my mother-in-law.  That will be determined at a different time.  I digress.

How does one say thank you for the gift of life? Especially knowing it means losing a loved one’s own? Though the words of my mouth fail in that department (shocker being the talk-your-face-off-talker that I am–especially if you add wine), my heart ponders these things often.

I think of the family that made the decision to share the hopes and dreams that would no longer be lived out in their loved one’s life with a loved one of mine.  And I suppose that we say thank you by saying how we so look forward to the life yet to be lived.  We have joy because of their grief.

I think of a life lost, and how it was, I assume, so very difficult sitting around the Thanksgiving table for the first time this year without that soul still here on earth, and an empty chair where it once sat.  Maybe a favorite recipe wasn’t made for the first time in years, or the one that always said the blessing or was the comic relief, maybe that wasn’t there.  And I hope they know how our Thanksgiving was so different this year.  How having a piece of their loved one living in one of our loved ones at our dinner table (or hospital tray, but still), and a chair that could have very easily been empty filled up, made us all thank God with an even truer intention.  Thanks-living will have new meaning. I pray that they know this and it comforts them.

And Christmas.  The time together that wasn’t the same this year.  Perhaps an ornament was hung upon the Christmas tree that brought someone tears as opposed to cheer this year, and was placed on a branch a bit gingerly as an object of remembrance and memorial.  Someone didn’t get a present under the tree from a loved one for the first time in years. Handwriting on a gift label that wouldn’t be there anymore except perhaps on a recycled gift sack’s hang tag…

BUT Christmas.  The Baby in the manger.  The tiny, precious loved One of a naive young mother.  “What child IS this?” Who at the time had no idea how this Babe would have to be sacrificed in order to save others.  What that would look like, how that would feel, but loved that baby regardless.  And she pondered these things in her heart.  She gave Him life, and He gave us life.  Us that are so very undeserving, but so very, very in need of Him.  Life-giving.  I see a juxtaposition with my father-in-law’s recent gift.  Who knows that we may in death have an opportunity to save another? And that, much like Mary didn’t get to choose whom her Son would save,  this family didn’t get to choose us or decide whom should receive those most precious organs, or if he was even worthy, but gave them away anyway.   I pray that they know that these lungs are cherished and that my father-in-law was worth it.  I pray they know we say “thank you” every time we look at the man who is breathing without a tube, every time we hear Big Daddy’s voice with breath from their loved one’s lungs, every time we get to talk about the future that wasn’t to be had they not so unselfishly chosen to give a gift bigger than any other this side of heaven and next to Jesus.

They gave Bob life again.

They gave us life again.

Jesus gives us all life again.

I hope they know we say thank you.

I hope we all live in ways so Jesus knows our thankfulness.

Author: dailyparrscription

Fun gal with a lot to say View all posts by dailyparrscription