We have given thanks on this Thanksgiving Day for the blessings that have come in our lives. We show gratitude for our family and friends, for those we hold dear and for the things that we have. The things that in the last year we have acquired, and the things that we have attained in the years before, and yes they are a blessings …. They were given to us …. A gift that we may not deserve but given to us nonetheless. I give thanks to the people I call family, for the house I own, the car I drive and the food I eat while not three blocks away from the place I work a woman sits alone, everything she owns contained within a shopping cart …. Everything she eats attained by struggle, she never holds a sign, she never begs and yet she seems fulfilled, perhaps not by what’s in her belly or her possessions that she can surely count on both hands, but by what is inside of her, something that I have yet to fathom. A “Spirit” that knows no bounds.
She never asks for help but she will take it if its offered, I once went to Wal-Mart across the street from the sidewalk on which she lives, it was raining so as I was inside I bought an umbrella (an inconsequential thing I know, it was raining so I bought it so I wouldn’t have to get wet on the way back to my car). As I came out I saw her, I don’t know why, I had looked at her a dozen times before but this time I actually saw her …. She was wet from the rain so i offered to her this thing that cost me only fifteen dollars, and the smile she gave me was worth that meager ten and five dollars and a thousand fold of what I would ever make in this life of monetary value. The words that she spoke to me, though simple will have an everlasting impact on my life …. She said “thank you”, that’s all, that was the end of our monologue, but in those two simple words, that in and of themselves can mean quite an assortment of things, I glimpsed peace!!
So please be thankful for the things that you have and above all else be thankful for the “people” that you have in your lives, and when you see someone that needs help …. Whether they are asking for it or not, if you can help them, then by all means do so. For we all are just a rocks throw away from being that woman on the sidewalk, with all of our things being stuffed within a shopping cart, hoping that in our troubled state …… in our time of need … someone, anyone, will give us ….. An umbrella
This has been another edition of Ryland’s Raves ……. Thanks for reading