Question??? Why do we eat like hogs and still call it "Turkey Day"?  It is one of many questions bouncing around in my head. Thanksgiving day came and went Thursday,  The Dallas Cowboys  delivered their traditional Spanksgiving feast to the Seattle Seahawks. (What the heck is a Seahawk  anyway???)  I personally have never seen one, and I have actually been to Seattle. Yes, that is another rhetorical question. Thursday was never meant to be the gluttonous gutbusting occasion we have turned it into. It was about us thanking a people who had little, yet, gave their knowledge and skills to a starving people who never would have survived that first winter without their help. Have you heard this story?

     My little Iowa family sits around the table talking briefly about what we are thankful for. Family, food on the table, the new puppy, daddy's heart... you know what I mean. Please don't view that as a flippant remark, I am getting to  the good stuff soon. I would be remiss if I didn't  take the time to care, and write what you are about to read...

Will you give me your heart?

October 25, 2005,

Stay with me Mark,

He's barely alive.

If we don't get him there,

he will not survive.

I'm sorry Mary,

He probably won't make it.

His heart is destroyed,

his body can't take it.

He's fat and a smoker,

he did this himself.

There is little or nothing,

we can do to help.

We shocked him often,

to help him restart,

but at the end of the day,

he'll need a new heart.

Drugs and machines,

will sustain him, till then.

But the match will be hard,

He's such a big man.

August 1st, 2008,

the phone finally rings,

we all celebrate!

A new lease on life,

a family in grief 

looked past their great loss, through much pain and  strife.

to donate his organs,

thus, saving my life.

   I have written this with the utmost Thanksgiving in my heart. I can only hope to someday meet my donor family. To thank the family who donated those organs through tears of pain and loss. Every day I wake I say "Thank You". First to my best friend God, who filled up my heart. Second to Mary and the girls, whose lives have been on hold. To my donor, who left behind a family in pain. To all those who prayed for us, and all those who helped, with sage advice, tough love, and physical help. To the doctors who would not give up, let alone let me quit. I have so very much to be thankful for, not only this year, but, each day God gives me, beyond that day in August, that a new healthy heart beats in my chest. That feeling is second , only,  to the day that I asked God into my heart and he embraced me with love, and swaddled me with his grace.

    Thank you, and God bless you. I am thankful to you all,