Tag: 30 days of gratitude

Renee – Day 1

I’m blogging every day of November, with each day being a post about a thing for which I am grateful. – HH

I take privacy pretty seriously. I am pretty open with my life, but I made the choice to be. As someone who has been writing on the web since 2003, I’m pretty clear about what parts of my life are open for sharing, and which are not.

Other people get to choose that as well.

You have the unlimited right to tell your story. But you don’t have the right to other people’s stories. My wife Renee is much more private than I am, and so I don’t write much about her here, and anything I do choose to say about her has been read by her before I hit publish.

So what I wrote below is a fraction of what I could say about her, but sometimes, less is more.

Any list of the things I am thankful for has to start with Renee. The list of things she has given up to be married to me is long and lengthy. She’s always believed I could do it, no matter what “it” was. She believed in me and my ability to make it work when I couldn’t. Her confidence in us is staggering.

Her love for me is rivaled only by her love for 90’s Hip Hop. And even though she would much rather eat Kraft mac & cheese and chicken fingers than anything I want to cook, she lets me do all the cooking.

Whatever my idea of living a good life is comprised of, it includes her.

(That picture was taken on our first full day of married life, back in 2009, at Carolina Beach. I always love this smile)

30 Days of Gratitude

I said when I started this project that it was ultimately about my trying to learn how to live a good life. I went through a lot of pains to try to come up with categories that I thought went into that, like Resilience, and Reflecting, and Sharing, but you never think of everything up front: One I forgot was Gratitude.

I have been incredibly fortunate in this life. I’ve swam in both oceans. Seen other countries. Ate Michelin starred food. Been published in National and International publications. I have a row of books on my shelves in which I’m quoted. There are at least a couple of dozen people alive right now because of work I’ve done, that would most likely not be had I not done it. I have lectured at Graduate schools and Seminaries. Read at least 8,000 books. Seen works of art that stagger the mind. There are several nonprofits around the country doing amazing work whose origin story includes my work. My wife and I helped raise more than a dozen kids, including six that lived with us when they didn’t have anywhere else to go. My refrigerator is covered with pictures of friends from all over the world, who live on every continent but Antarctica. My wife loves me and together we have faced down death, tragedy, slander, depression and suicidal ideation and we came out the other side intact. I’ve exceeded every expectation anybody ever had for a working class kid from Marshall County, MS.

If it all ended tomorrow, I don’t see how I would have any complaint at all. My life has been amazing. And it seems to me that, in light of all that, the only proper response to it all is gratitude.

There is a popular meme on Social Media where people note the things for which they are thankful, one a day for the 30 days of November. I have often meant to participate in this, but being the ADHD-riddled Chaos Muppet I am, incapable of advance planning, I forget until we are halfway through the month.

This time, I remembered. But as often happens with me, once I started writing, I had a hard time stopping. So while other people would write, “I’m grateful for books!” I wrote 1,000 words talking about how grateful I am for books. So I decided I would post the series here on the blog – a post a day for the rest of November.

As always, I would to know what you are grateful for, either in the comments here or on one of the social sites where this blog is shared.