Thanksgiving Prayer or Mantra?

As turkey day approaches, I have made out my Thanksgiving prayer, which I will use as a mantra while the day progresses:

Dear Lord,

Grant me the strength to get up and begin boiling eggs, giblets and vegetables in broth and dunking a twelve pound bird in water in my sink because it’s still partially frozen, all before my morning coffee.

Give me the perseverance to keep from killing my dog when I discover she has hunted down something “off limits” in the family room to eat as an appetizer before she receives her morning food.

Bestow upon me the humor to laugh at myself when I overcook the bird and my husband says he thought we were having ham.

Allow me the graciousness to overlook the fact that, even as my husband eats his second plate of food he said he didn’t want to begin with, he still holds on to the remote control tightly and his eyes remain glued to college football on TV.




Control my rising temper as I try without luck to fit the leftovers in the refrigerator and am interrupted by my husband asking if he can have another plate full.

Be still my beating heart as the dog chokes on the wishbone hubby left on the side of his tray and finally coughs it up.

Grant me a few moments to myself to write madly on my computer in an attempt to quell my nerves, thereby writing at twice the speed and making half my normal sense.

Provide me with the energy to wash all the pots and pans and fill the dishwasher while my husband snores in his recliner and the dog sleeps in a curled ball in my chair.

For all in all, I should give thanks for what I have and that I am not destitute, without food, warmth, a shelter over my head and the knowledge that I am secure for tomorrow. For many do not have that.

You see, dear reader, my troubles are really few and my trials are nothing more than the normal ones of the harried married writer.