Sorely Thankful ...

This was a great time with family at Thanksgiving. My oldest daughter (middle child) hosted our family, all 12 of us. She is a resident director at a small college and all the students were gone. We also used a guest house on the campus for sleeping purposes. But all day we had the run of a 3 story dorm. It was great. I played hours of hide and seek, hide and seek tag, regular tag and sardines. If you are not familiar with hide and seek tag, it is simply combining the classic games of tag and hide and seek. You seek those who are hiding, but must also tag them to have successfully found them. Sardines is where one person hides then the rest of the group tries to find them, but when you find them you hide with them until the last person has found the group.

I haven't run that much in a long time, especially sprinting and add to it that many of these sprints were up and down stairs. Therefore, the title of this post. My legs hurt like they haven't hurt in many years. I might look to add this to my volleyball team's preseason conditioning. Amazingly the grandkids didn't seem to mind it at all. As I recall no child ever asked to stop playing for a while, it was always an adult, okay it was usually me. But that is because I played nearly every game.

It was awesome to be able to spend so much time with my wife, kids (that includes my kids-in-law because I consider them my kids) and grandkids. The grandkids range in age from 2 weeks shy of 11, to 8, to 6, to 4 to 20 months. After the kids went to bed the adults (I use that term purely from a biological definition) would play table games. The running stopped after the kids went down, unless you count running the mouth (did I type that?). We enjoyed a wonderful meal, it actually lasted for at least 3 meals we are nothing if not thrifty or at least very hungry.

It was so encouraging to see my kids and grandkids enjoying each other's company and not minding that mom and dad were hanging around. It is great to see that all of my kids love the Lord and are serving the Lord where they live. It is encouraging to to get hugs and kisses from grandkids. It is encouraging and incredibly humbling to realize how blessed I am. So I am very thankful for many things and I am very sore for some obvious reasons. That's right I am sorely thankful.

Lord, help me to notice and touch those who do not have as much for which to be thankful.