4 days, What???

Can you believe only 4 days left!!!

Today I am thankful for all of my temporal blessings. A lot of my life my family has struggled financially. When I was in 7th grade my dad lost his job of over 30 years. He was in his 60s and couldn't find another job. Forced retirement I guess. He opened a frozen yogurt store with his severance, which he loved, and I loved, it was so fun. But, it was the horrible recession of the early 90s and it ended up failing. My parents lost our home. I remember things being really stressful. The summer of my 8th grade year I lived in a tent. We were homeless. I didn't think of it that way then. We stayed at a camp ground that my parents had purchased a membership to years before. My mom and dad and Aunt Patty stayed in our pop up tent.  You know the kind that you haul behind your car and it pops out. I stayed in a real tent. Thankfully my mother had been big in boy scouts and camped a lot. We had a lot of campng equipment and I had a cot that I slept on in my tent. My brother Joe was gone most of that summer. I remember at 14 not understanding what was happening. I had a testimony that my Father in Heaven was aware of me and my little family and that he loved me and that everything would be okay. But, it was difficult. I remember learning in that time though, that I could be happy and content without a house. That it wasn't the material things in life that made me happy.  My parents both struggled with health problems around that same time and I learned that as long as we were together it didn't matter where we lived. The day before my 9th grade year we moved to a fifth wheel on my dad's friends dairy farm. We stayed in that 15 ft trailer for a few months and then moved into a mobile home where I had my own room again. The mobile home was old and filled with mice. I had a mattress on the ground at the time and woke up to a mouse running across my chest. Fun times. :) But I was thankful for a place to live.  My dad slept on the mattress that he had removed from the pop up tent. A thin pad really. Joe slept on an old couch. He didn't have a room. We didn't even have enough beds for all of us. It makes me sad to look back. My brother Joe and I learned to rely on each other. We had the same friends and did a lot of really fun things. I look back at some really happy times. I am completely grateful however for the temporal blessings of this life. There are so many people around the world who do not have all of the wonderful conveniences we consider necesities. I murmur often about only having one car and the inconveniences it creates in our family. I will try harder not to. I will reflect more often on where I have come from and look around at the beautiful home that I live in with the beautiful people I share my life with. I am truly blessed.