GIVING THANKS FOR 7 YEARS OF BAD LUCK

Not sure if this is allowed, since we are past the Thanksgiving weekend, but I would like to give thanks to God for something. I know: we are supposed to be all about Christmas now - listen to the music, tear through the advertisements, and think only about buying and getting gifts. But, if you would allow me, I would like, just this one time, to give thanks for something.

On Thanksgiving Day, we had friends over, and after stuffing ourselves, were playing a game together. All the kids were playing nicely (as far as we knew) downstairs. All of a sudden, one of our children informed us that something had fallen and broken down where they were playing. It seemed somewhat urgent, so we took off for the basement.

Once we arrived, we saw what had happened: a huge mirror set in a corner had fallen over and broken in a million pieces (my estimation). One of our children had hidden behind the mirror, and when getting out from behind it, had pushed it over. It took us quite a while to clean up the mess. One of our friends, watching while we vacuumed up the pieces of glass, reminded us that we now face 7 years of bad luck.

And that brings me to my point of thanksgiving: I praise God that, even though a mirror was destroyed, and the clean up was a major pain, NO ONE WAS HURT. Since our child was behind the mirror, there was no injury there (and our child was wise enough not to walk on the broken glass!). And even though the basement was full of kids, no other child was over in that area at the time - THANK YOU GOD!

It is easy for me to take our children's safety for granted; but in cases like this, I am reminded that our child or someone else's could have been seriously hurt - and their safety, for we parents, is the most important thing. There are other lessons to be learned - safety lessons, etc. with something like this; but most all, this is a moment to GIVE THANKS!