My dress was still damp from the inordinate amount of Downy Wrinkle Release I had sprayed on it and someone was using the dryer. I walked outside and looked for a place that the sun shown through the trees and stood in it, hoping it would dry my dress. Of course, this particular spot was in the street beside my house.

As the sun sucked the spray out of my clothes, I looked down and noticed I had all ten toes. I never noticed before. But there they were. All ten. I even counted them, lifting one toe at a time as I recognized it by number. One, two, three, four…

Of course, living in a heavily tourist-y area, a car drove by and stopped. I must have looked very odd, standing in the road, looking down at my toes. “What is it?” the man in the car asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I looked up at him, probably confusing him more, because he then drove away quite quickly. I looked back at my toes and said a quick prayer, thanking God that I had ten.

This bizarre act on my part got me thinking the rest of the week of how little I am thankful for the things that haven’t happened to me. It’s easy to be thankful for the things I have, the people I know, the circumstances I live in. But it’s hard to remember to be thankful for things that haven’t happened. I have never lost a close family member. I haven’t been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I’ve never been forced out of my home. I’ve never seen war first hand. I’ve never lost a toe.

I think sometimes we think we deserve these things (toes, comfort, etc.) but that logic doesn’t work. For I know that I deserve nothing and everything I do have comes from the grace of God. Everything. Even the limbs that hang from my body. How is it that I don’t fall on my face constantly in praise for all that I have and all that has not yet been taken from me?