gratitude: america

America is a wonderful place to live.  Life here runs so smoothly.  There was a time in my life when I couldn't wait to get OUT of America and tried to at every opportunity.  I managed to use my passport annually for like 10 years in a row.  But after all of that, it is so nice to settle down and live here and enjoy the freedoms of the home of the brave.  Seriously.  We are so fortunate to have so much at our fingertips.  Our roads our paved, our cars are safe, our judicial system is just, our hospitals are trusted, our water runs hot and cold, our mail arrives unmarred on a daily basis, and our trash gets picked up twice a week.  The land of infrastructure and opportunity!

During my stints in the third world I would promise myself that, upon arriving back in the U.S., I would never take certain things for granted again.  At the top of the list: reliable internet.  FAST internet.  Unfortunately, I am so often on the computer that I don't pause to thank God every time I use it.  I've fallen back to my old ways of fussing over a few seconds to load.  Another of my promises was that I'd never take a washing machine or dryer for granted again.  That stemmed out of my semester in Tanzania where my clothes were beat on rocks and rinsed in river water.  In Kenya, I had a washing machine but no dryer, and yes, the sun dries your clothes, but it also turns them a different color.  Not to mention, there it all is, for the world to see.  But while laundry takes less time and manpower here than there, it is still just laundry and I don't remember to thank God every time the hamper fills up.

But I promise you, I DO thank God every day during one morning ritual.

Coffee time.

And not because of the coffee, which is tasty, or the mug, which is actually Kenyan . . .

But because of the creamer.

I love coffee creamer and I always will, for all if it's high-fructose corn syrup.  Creamers never made it to Kenya, and while I did pretty well with some flavored syrups and skim milk, it never quite tasted like I wished it did.  I even started taking it black after a while.  But here, in the land of plenty, there is always coffee creamer in the fridge.  I went a little wild this week since we had visitors and life is richer than usual.

Not to throw this in the face of any African-dwelling friends (or Asian or South American, for that matter).  Because with each morning cup comes a fleeting thought of thankfulness, a moment of realization that these gifts are good and deserve to be recognized, and a little prayer for those far away from the luxuries of flavored creamer.