Happy Thanksgiving

I was thinking today about this quote:

"Humility and gratitude are truly the twin characteristics of happiness." -- Bishop Richard C. Edgley

I have found this to be true.

So, in the spirit of the pursuit of happiness and Thanksgiving tradition, I would like to share a few things for which I am grateful:

I am so grateful I have a job. I think the Lord is very clever to give me a job and then also make me completely broke so that at first when I didn't like it and wanted to quit I couldn't!

I am grateful for amazing friends. Once I was talking to a friend and lamenting how annoying I was and she asked me if I really felt that way and I replied "I figure my friends are great enough that I can't be all that bad." I love them all so severely that it's a bit overwhelming.

I am so grateful for my family. I am sad we can't all be together at Thanksgiving...and it breaks my heart that I don't know when we'll all be together again (maybe Waterton this summer?). I love my family and am just too happy for that AND that I adore both of my sisters-in-law. People always tell stories of bad in-laws and I can never relate.

Most of all, I am grateful for my relationship with my Heavenly Father. A number of years ago I thought my life was pretty bad. I had felt like I needed to move to Provo after rejecting a job offer in D.C. So I lived there for about four months without a job. I always complain about having to go to work, but let me tell you, being unemployed is much worse! I was very sad and everything in my life seemed to be going wrong. A few days before Thanksgiving I was walking around BYU campus and contemplated how I had nothing to be grateful for. And then I realized that I had a relationship with my Heavenly Father and a knowledge of the gospel and of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Of nothing could I ever be more grateful. And it is through that relationship and understanding of which I was so grateful that I was able to find happiness again.

Happy Thanksgiving!