By Pattie Mihalik

When my husband and I went to pick up my shoes at the shoemaker’s, as we were leaving, the owner’s wife told us to “enjoy the beautiful day.”

In actuality, the “beautiful day” was one of the rare ugly days we see in southwest Florida.

It was cold, damp and raining. With low visibility it looked more like a snow day in the northeast than a “beautiful day” in Florida.

It took another minute for me to realize she was right. It was a beautiful day.

Each and every day we are given is a beautiful day. There is no such thing as an ugly day when we get up and receive the gift of another day.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the many blessings we are given.

I’ve told you how I start each and every day with what I call my gratitude walk. Every time I open the front door to start my walk I have a deep intake of breath as I take in the new day.

Regardless of whether we have sunshine or rain, I see beauty all around me.

What I realize as I’ve grown older is how my prayer of thanksgiving has changed. I used to thank God for my family and for the special blessings in my life.

Now, I thank God for everything.

When I was younger, I didn’t think much about health, and I sure didn’t see it as the blessing that it is. I took a capable, healthy body for granted.

I no longer do. When I can walk without pain, I thank God.

I especially thank God for a mind that still works.

Perhaps others can take that for granted, but with my mother and aunts and other relatives dying with Alzheimer’s, I can’t take a good mind for granted. I often say thank you for that working mind.

There are many things for which I am thankful that I never before regarded as blessings. Mostly, I mean having a body that functions as it should. As we get older, we know we cannot take that for granted.

I interviewed a 90-year-old man who told me the older he grows, the more he has to be thankful for.

If he can hear, he’s thankful, even if it’s with a hearing aid.

If he can see, even with failing vision, he’s thankful.

I know what he means.

No matter how many times a day I say a prayer of gratitude, I feel that I can’t say thank you enough for some blessings.

Both David and I are cognizant of the blessing we have in a strong marriage. We know, too, that we are blessed in enjoying the same things.

At the top of my list of things for which I am most grateful I put my family. I am thankful for every phone call from my daughters and my sister. And because our visits are much more limited than we want them to be, I am especially thankful for every time we are together.

I often hear people talk about the bad feelings they have for a particular relative.

I wonder if their situation would change if they started being grateful for that relative. Each and every person has some redeemable qualities, even if they aren’t so obvious.

On my list of things for which I am grateful, I put a lot of everyday things.

Sometimes, when David and I are shopping in the grocery store or walking into Walmart, I say a prayer of gratitude for being able to do that.

It is a blessing to be able to walk in a grocery store and fill our cart with the food we want. Maybe it’s because I am only one generation away from a time when feeding one’s family was difficult.

It continues to strike me as strange that most people are preoccupied with not eating so much. Only a generation ago, my mother struggled to feed a family when there wasn’t any money coming in.

Think about how much money many of us spend now — just so we can lose a few pounds. It’s definitely a first-world problem, isn’t it?

But I wonder if people think of having food as a blessing.

Sure, when we say grace before meals we always say thank you for the food we are about to eat.

But do we truly know how lucky we are to have that food? Or, do we take it for granted?

Most of us take a lot for granted.

I am especially thankful for answered prayers — for a family relationship that healed, for a friend who is able to walk again after a stroke, for another friend who healed after a serious car accident had her bedridden for almost three months.

I am thankful for prayerful people who pray for me and for others, and I am thankful for all those who try to make this world a better place.

So I’ll close by wishing all of you a beautiful, thankful day — one that makes you aware of how much you have for which to be grateful.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.