Top Nine Blessings to Be Thankful for as an American - Celebrating the Birth of Our Nation

Being that this week concludes with the Celebration of the birth of the United States of America or 4th of July for short, I'd like to dedicate all posts this week to this great land.

Today's focus is, "Top Nine Blessings to Be Thankful for as an American." Most of us take these things for granted not realizing that these conveniences and pleasures are not experienced by so many around the world. Don't take this as a criticism! This is meant to more of an eye opening post about the things we are so fortunate to have here in America.

Top Nine Blessings to Be Thankful for as an American:

• Hospitals filled with life saving equipment, medication, and educated people to help us, all within a short drive of our home. When I went to the British Virgin Islands I hoped that I wouldn't have a medical emergency (thankfully I didn't!) The hospital was small and antiquated looking not to mention it wasn't around the corner.
• Doctors with specialities of all types that ease our pain, resolve our medical issues, and help us to take preventative action for our health. Did you know in many countries who either don't have dentists or can't afford to go walk around without most of their teeth because they've rotted and fallen out? Not only does that look unattractive, but it makes it difficult to eat. You don't see that often in the USA because of our educated dentists.
• Prescriptions with easy access. If you don't have any medical problems, you don't give much thought to this, but if you do, you come to appreciate how the quality of life can be improved with the use of prescriptions (even with those pesky side effects!) In America, we have pharmacies on every corner, in our supermarkets, and available through the mail. And although we may complain about the co-pays, we'd hesitate if stopped to investigate the total cost which is picked up by insurance if we have it.
• Food everywhere. I wrote a post last week on how fortunate we are to have access to good food every where we turn. Check out my post on Eatin' Good.
• Little luxuries. I have a huge armoire filled with jewelry - costume and real gold. Between my husband and I, we have four cars, one of them being a Corvette (my favorite!) We have tons of clothes, nice home decor, TV's, computers, other technology gadgets, and on and on and on. My point? I am not trying to brag - I just want us to realize that at any given time, we can go to one of numerous stores and get what we want. That's no so for everyone in the world.
• Freedom. This is one of our most precious possession which we'll talk about later this week.
• Civil order. For the most part, we can walk the streets of our country without feeling too much concern. Mostly we have civil order on our streets thanks to the thousands of police officers that keep it that way. There are no bombers or non-stop shooting on our streets. Yes, you have the criminals who make waves for the rest of us, but for the most part we are a civil nation.
• Fancy homes. How fortunate we are to have the protection of our beautiful homes, filled with luxuries and modern conveniences like air conditioning, plumbing, and electricity. Even the most basic of homes are still much better than the living conditions for some around the world.
• Education. Our children get a great education these days, learning things I never learned or didn't learn until high school (and I am only 33!) and we're fortunate to have community colleges, colleges, universities, and trade schools to better ourselves and our careers.

What am I forgetting? There are so many more things big and small and we'll talk about them as we lead up to the 4th of July. Feel free to share your own thoughts on blessings we enjoy in the U.S.

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Wishing you "Blessings from Above,"

Denise

Plentiful delicacies

The other day I dropped my precious sugar bowl on the floor splattering sugar all over the place. I was heart broken because it matched my dishware. I also felt a twinge a guilt because centuries ago, sugar was considered a precious and rare item - only the rich had it - and here I was sweeping it off the floor and throwing it in the trash.

The same goes for food. Food is so precious to the hungry, yet so many of us, myself included, take it for granted. We have so much of it we don't know what to do with it all. That's particularly common during Christmas when we stuff ourselves at holiday parties and then wrap up the huge of amount of leftovers and divvy it up to take it home. And often it's the good stuff - crab meat, shrimp, sweet fruits, gourmet candies. Next time this happens, take a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are. There are people in other parts of the world that would just be grateful for anything to eat, let alone have all these delicacies in such enormous amounts.

Wishing you "Blessings from Above"
Denise