Are You Thankful For Your Memory?

The older I get the more I am comforted by thoughts from the past. A song comes on the radio, and I immediately get thrown into my childhood to a particular activity or situation. Often, an odor from burning leaves, etc. will remind me of something special in my past. Sometimes I just go to certain places and remember the freedom from responsibility as a teenager. I love it when this happens! Experiences good and bad come to mind periodically. Of course, I draw great pleasure from the good ones, while I detest the bad ones. I am told the older we get the more this happens.

Sometimes we see and hear of people who cannot remember things. This is always sad. I know how I feel when I cannot remember something important. I can just imagine how it must be when you cannot remember your family and so on. We should be thankful that God has given us memory. It helps us keep from making the mistakes. It helps us complete our jobs, and to instruct others in various subjects. We should do our utmost to guard our memories, and keep our minds active so as to prolong our usefulness! The ability to remember an event/situation with clarity is a gift from God Himself!

Here is a link to help us with cultivating our memories:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Brain-Boosting---Tips-For-Improving-Your-Memory&id=2980396
http://ezinearticles.com/?Maintain-Your-Brain---Lessening-the-Risk-of-Alzheimers-Disease&id=169171


Please share your comments with us concerning a favorite memory you have. Pass this along with other!

Are You Thankful For Your Watch?

One of the first gadgets I received as a young man was a watch. In fact, one year my grandpa brought me a watch from New York and it later turned my arm green. I also had one that was water resistant and could be worn while swimming. It was really neat. In elementary school, you were defined as to what kind of person you were by the kind of watch you wore. It made no difference to your friends that everyone’s watches gave accurate time; it was what KIND of watch that mattered. Boy, were we stupid!

As I grew up I have had numerous watches. When I started working as a young man, I stopped wearing a watch because I kept breaking them. When you turn wrenches in an automobile garage, you will not keep one long! My need for knowing what time it was did not diminish, I still had to find a way to track time. For many of us, we need to keep up with what the time is. Sure you can look at the sun and figure if it is morning or afternoon, but we need to be more specific.

Numerous jobs, sporting events, and medical facilities need to know what time it is. The easiest way to track time is to look at your cell phone, or computer. This insures accuracy, but there will always be a need for watches. Most of the time they are inexpensive, but they can be a status symbol, as it was for me in elementary school. I could not imagine how I could manage if there was no way to track my time.

We should be thankful for our watches. They are so handy and can mean everything to us. Especially if we were in a medical emergency! Each morning we adorn ourselves with our jewelry and watches, but we need to make sure that we appreciate the ability to own and maintain our watch. Not owning one can cause you to miss that all important date with your soon to be spouse! Be thankful for your timepiece!

Please pass along your comments as well as your funny stories about how you lost or broke your watch. Pass this along to others!

Are You Thankful For Your Toilet?

I’ll bet you that you have never thought about the need to being thankful for your plumbing. If you are like me, then you have never had to daily use the restroom outdoors (“Johnny”, “Outhouse”, etc.). As long as I can remember, thankfully, I have been able to use the toilet… INDOORS!

We moved in with my Grandma in the middle part of my sixth grade year. The house was built by my great grandfather. He built a strong and tight structure, but put it in the wrong location. It was at the bottom of a hill from two directions, and was at the middle part of a hill from a third. Simply put, when it rained, our front yard could became a funnel forming a small river. Of course, in the interest of availability, the septic tank was placed in the front yard where all of the water would flow through. Most of the year things would be fine, but if it rained a lot, then the tank would fill; backing up the system. This meant that if you wanted to bathe, you had to wash in the sink. If you flushed the commode, then you had better be “prayed up”. Many times it would run over. THAT IS NASTY!

One year in particular, in February, it snowed and sleeted. The ground was frozen and the tank was full. There was no way to get it pumped. We just had to be careful. We took showers at my uncle’s house, and tried to use the bathroom there as much as we could. We were sorely inconvenienced. At an early age, I began to understand the importance of being thankful for my indoor toilet!

Any hunter has had to use the facilities when at the most inopportune time. There is nothing much worse than to be hunting in a godforsaken place and nowhere to use a toilet. In your mind you are wishing for a nice warm commode seat with soft toilet paper. With your favorite magazine on your lap, you take could care of business. That is all it is… wishing! All of a sudden you are thankful for that nice cozy bathroom fitted with that ivory colored throne. With such flushing power that nothing stays behind! You are so thankful that when you arrive back at home, you take an extended stay in there! HA HA!

Humors aside, let’s face it! We should be thankful for our toilet! We should be thankful that we have a plumbing system, whether septic or sewer. Many parts of the world have no real sanitary place like our facilities here in America. I guess we are spoiled. I think about how awkward Crocodile Dundee was when he saw the bathroom in New York that time. You know… he did not know just how good it was. He was used to things a different way. Whether yours is red, yellow, green, or the stock color of ivory white, be thankful for that throne. Even if it does not have the old style, muscle car flush of yesteryear. Be thankful!

Please pass along your “clean” and “sanitary” comments! Kindly pass this along to your friends… especially the guys! LOL

Are You Thankful For Your Water Heater?

It is 6:00 AM. The alarm goes off and it is time to get up. With sleep in your eyes, and bad breath about to make you gag, you find your way to the bathroom. The room is chilly, even with the rug in the floor. You turn the shower on and jump in as usual. AAHHHHHH! The water is too cold. “What is going on?” you ask yourself. Obviously, it has something to do with the water heater!

Several years ago, my wife and I bought some property and placed a double wide trailer on it. It was January 2000 and there was snow on the ground. I left the apartment we were staying in at our church and drove down the street at 6:00 AM to take a shower in our new home before work. Though we hadn’t yet moved in, I still wanted to shower there. The evening before, I had turned water heater on, expecting to have warm water in the morning. Well, you guessed it… no hot water! I was so disappointed. I had made a fatal mistake. I must have turned the power on too soon before the tank had completely filled with water. The bottom line was that I did not have hot water!

Most people have had that problem for various reasons, but there is some help. Now you can get these new fangled heaters. You know… the ones that heat the water as you need it! They must be great. That being said, I had not appreciated hot water until then! I am finding that the older I get, the more I like hot water. Especially in the morning! When I build another house, I think I will invest in one of those new water heaters.

In the old days, people had to heat their water over a fire or on the wood stove. It took some time, but you could get a hot bath every now and then. Now we just turn the faucet and there she is! The water is the temperature you want it. We sure have come a long ways from those early days here in America. Around the world, many still have to heat water the old way. We should be thankful that we have the ability to enjoy such luxuries as a hot water heater!

Here is a link to get some tip for maintaining your water heater: http://www.diynetwork.com/plumbing/tips-on-maintaining-a-water-heater/index.html

Please share your story about the water heater mishap. Pass this along this to your friends!

Are You Thankful For Your Home?

So many people get dissatisfied with their house. They think that they have to have this or that because everyone else has it in their residence. Since when do we have to have everything everyone else has? Granted, as time goes on we out grow our house with more children, and with needed possessions. Sometimes people elect to work from their home. In which case, they will have to have an added room for the office. Just because we need more space does not mean that we stop being thankful for our house. Here in the States, the poorest among us are kings compared to the rest of the world. We can remodel our existing place, move to another location or expand the added space with thankfulness.

New for newness sake is just ingratitude. No matter how you slice it, impulsiveness is grounded in ingratitude fed from selfishness. In order to conquer this bad character flaw, we must determine to be thankful. Odds are you will spend less money on renovation, or expansion in your existing structure if you have a thankful heart. Greediness will demand that you get the most expensive this or that. Someone who is meek about the whole situation will choose the best value over the most extravagant. Sometimes better value comes with a higher price tag, but it is best to be thankful for what you can afford.

Now why all of the fuss? I feel that many are adding affliction to their family by trying to have a more elaborate house coupled with a wrong motive. There is nothing wrong with wanting to provide more for your family. In fact, if someone does not have this attitude, then I would find a problem there. However, we must display genuine thankfulness to our family members in dealing with our home and all our possessions. Ingratitude spreads like cancer. Our children will grow up thinking that in order to find happiness they will have to get “things” at all costs.

We should be genuinely thankful for the house we own or rent. It provides shelter from the elements, and provides a haven to our family. Even though there may be problems with portions of the house, you can still have a great home! Here is the great distinction! You can have a great big house full of your family, and not have a H.O.M.E.! Be thankful for your home in whatever house it may reside!

Please share your comments. Pass this along to others!

Are You Thankful For Your Parents?

From the very beginning, children have been prone to be unthankful for their parents. For many, it is a stage that one matures through. For others, it is something that never leaves them; even in their deaths. There are various reasons why people become unthankful for their moms and dads. I suppose that there is validity to some of those reasons, but they should never be relied on.

Growing up in a broken home provides an arena for this to flourish. As times goes on, you can see the flaw in this behavior, but, even then, bitterness has usually set in. Not only do you have to address the issue of thankfulness, but you have to battle bitterness. Many times you focus on being thankful for one parent at the expense of the other. This is not healthy.

Parents are not perfect, but they did bring us in this world. Even though Hollywood pokes fun at parents to make a buck, we have to be smarter than that. We have to remember that God give us to them, and He gave them to us. Each of us, with all of our peculiarities, are given to each other, for each other. We must endeavor to be thankful no matter the sin or circumstance! There will come a day, when we will wish we had treated them differently! The lost years will never be rewritten, but you can enjoy the ones you have left. 

Many are thankful for their parents. However, they never effectively show it. Whether it is through words, touch, gifts, or just visiting with them, make a concerted effort to express your thankfulness to them today! They should know, whatever they think of you, that you are thankful for them and that you love them.
Please express your comments, and pass this along to a friend!

Are You Thankful For Your Eyes?

Eyes are a window into the soul! They not only reveal a lot about us, but they do a lot for us. With that being said… are you thankful for your eyes? It is amazing how many of us take our eyes for granted. It is not until you cannot see well, or you damage your eye(s) or when disease has robbed you of your sight that we truly become more appreciative of our eyes! What about the people who are blind that wish they could see!

They eye is an amazing gift of God. Not only can we see a great distance away, but we can focus on things close up. Our eyes give us the ability to perceive depth. The information that our eyes tell our brain allows us to make decisions to keep us safe! For example, I do not trip over the corner table, because I see it. I avoid collision with oncoming traffic because my eyes determine that I need to move over. Our eyes serve us well to help keep us safe.

God has made the eye so that we can see in color. Though some are indeed colorblind, the vast majority of us can see in color! To see the bright cloud tops in a distant thunderstorm is a beautiful sight. To behold the irregular shaped mountain peaks off in the horizon is a wonderful. To gaze out across the massive valleys from atop the platform on Mount Pisgah, near Asheville, North Carolina is breathtaking. To be able to see our family as we talk to them is comforting! To watch our children play with each other in a city park is truly a unique experience.  We see many colors each day and we just do not think about it!

Our eyes educate us. Just consider the things we see which teach us. To be able to read is so important. We use our eyes to read letters so we can put words together in a sentence which makes a paragraph, and so on… all of this to enlighten ourselves in various subjects. You are using your eyes right now to read this post.

Our eyes help us to create. We make great cakes, casseroles, and various meals from a recipe. The recipe is written in words that we read with our eyes. We can make the dish with the right ingredients as we follow the directions! Using careful strokes, a painter can place the paint on the canvas to create a masterpiece. A doctor can use his eyes to guide him as he makes a careful incision. A photographer can use his eyes to find the right shot with just enough light to take an award winning picture of a sunset.

One could go on and on about this part of the body. The gist of this post is to simply remind you of an often overlooked member of your bodies! Take care of your eyes. I hope that you will not think about your eyes the same from now on.

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