I am thankful.

I am thankful for my own good health and good friends, and for my wife’s good health and good friends, and for my kids’ continued good health and good friends.

I am thankful for ground Sumatra coffee from Starbucks.

I am thankful for blog readers and Twitter followers and for a place to make too-honest confessions and write about what I like. (Thank you for reading, btw.)

I am thankful for good conversations with new Internet friends, whether they are romance novelists, atheists, professional subtitlers or, well, myself.

I am thankful for the churches, non-profits, retirement centers, banks, and clothiers that continue to hire me out so I can pay the bills.

I am thankful for long outside runs, even into a steady north wind, because it reminds me that my legs work, and I’m healthy, and I’m alive.

I am thankful that both of my children like to play Scrabble.

I am thankful that Owen always wants me to play basketball with him, and that Ellie keeps asking when she can read the children’s novel I started writing.

I am thankful for my wife’s chocolate chip cookies, which are the best in the western hemisphere and have insane fans on both the west and east coasts of the United States, and in Colorado, too.

I am thankful I get to spend this weekend with my four grandparents, all of which are still living and active and one of which still defeats me on a regular basis in ping-pong, despite being 87 years old.

I am thankful for bloggers/writers like Rachel Held Evans and singer/songwriters like Shellee Coley who are doing excellent work on the subject of spiritual doubt. (If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s an interview with me at Rachel’s blog. I intend to interview her sometime soon. Watch for it.)

I am thankful for The Amazing Race, Storm Chasers, How I Met Your Mother, Castle, and the impending returns of Burn Notice and Chuck. Oh, and Lost, too.

I am thankful that my wife is not especially interested in doing any shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, because she is cool that way. And because she is also cool in the way in which our Christmas shopping is already done, thanks to her.

I am thankful that after spending most of the 1990s hoping that someday I’d get to write books, I have spent most of the 2000s writing books.

I am thankful for readers.

I am thankful for you.

I am thankful for grace.

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I’m going dark. Blog silence until after Thanksgiving weekend. Have a great holiday and I’ll see you next week.