why write about this?

I wanted to write about being grateful because I wanted to be happy again. I had forgotten how to be happy. Every day I wake up. I do loads of things that other people think herculean. I used to think they were herculean. I'm not bragging but somehow in a few years time, I woke up and did something like this all last year.
I ran for 10-13 miles before 7am.
I showered. I said prayers with my daughter. We read scriptures.
She left. I worked. 8-10 hours. Sometimes I walked another 5-10 miles on my treadmill, like a snail, 2 or so miles an hour.
I finished with cleaning up lunch dishes that accrued, cooking dinner, cleaning up, running laundry, writing, watching a spot of something funny, debrief with the husband and kids, sipping a glass of wine or spot of scotch, showered, read, went to sleep one or two paragraphs in.
Every day.
Cooking was play. Running to books, to NPR, Play. But it became rote.

Then, our school was threatened by politics and national economics. Friends lost jobs. Lots of folks got sick, with cancer, with anorexia, with chronic stuff. Others had lousy spouses. I worked too hard. I lost my temper at computers. I shouted to the wind. Little birdies heard me. Facebook and broken computers are wind, and they carry sound-waves, thought-waves, brain-waves.

I hurt people. I broke trust.

I ran a marathon. I finished a goal. I got a mysterious injury.

Building blocks of joy that I forgot to thank God for turned into monotony. The pains and sorrows compounded. I felt squashing depression.

So here I am, each day, making an effort to think of things for which I am grateful. I do the same routines, except, I tread like a snail for 15-16 miles on my treadmill. My pelvic may be fractured. I cannot run.

I sleep longer, hoping the bones will mend. I write longer, hoping to keep an A even if I get only rejection notices for publishing and blunt critiques for structural flaws in my work.

Still, there is something, I have learned, to work at what I do not want to do. I do not want to take the time to think of what makes me grateful, or for what I am thankful. It's work on a day like today, when I stare out my back porch at the lettuce that gave in because the temps were below ten.

I am thankful I did not have to go out today.
I am still thankful that treadmill keeps going.
I am thankful for a plentitude of gifts, like it, and the generous folks who bestowed love on me. I don't deserve them.
I am thankful my daughter is going to play a game with me, even though she feels awful.
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I am thankful I won a quiet round of banagrams by laying the last tile seconds before she laid hers. In other words, it was a tie.
I am thankful for the rosemary hanging on.
I am thankful for foot rubs and little neckrubs, short touches, quick kisses, chatty interludes with my husband.
I am thankful for that one joke that breaks the tension, whatever it is.
I am thankful that tomorrow is the feast day of Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, a fool for Christ, because I think I want to be a fool for Christ.
I am thankful for hot tea.

Thank God.