The Eve of a New Year

A crisp white page and a crisp new year right around the clock's corner.  From a rickety leather recliner in the spot by the window, sitting so aware of the last hours of the year I want to render something meaningful and true before I must let it go.  

I get a snack, a drink, look out a window, change the wet laundry to the drier and then sit down to carry on. Lively Wheatens wrestle one another next to me on my chair. The warm bodies crowding me, getting out of control.  One sits proudly right down on my resting right arm then ignites off the chair, raucously into play. :)  

 A realization has come over me and I don't have to try in order to sit grateful to the core in the eve of a new year.  I just am.  And I see why we're invited, called really, and directed into thankfulness. 
I think it is where the human heart was created to be, where we would be most alive. Gratefulness is a perfect fit for us, a sweet spot for the soul.  

 Morning by morning, like a safe shelter one can run to, or a life raft for one's heart no matter the depths of what could be despair. How deep no longer matters when always buoyed right up to where the sun shines--this has been the power of thankfulness to me. It has caused me to survey the passing year with such fondness (though full of trial and pain), as if it were the best year, but maybe what I'm saying is it was my most grateful year and that has colored everything in a rosy glow.