A "What If" Thankfulness

   Is there a part of thankfulness that looks backward and asks the question "what if"?

   Things happen in our lives that, on the surface look bad, but as we take the time to look at the events that preceded, we find that God has been there, and it could have been much worse. Of course, bad, worse and much worse are all relative to the situation. What looks bad to me at this moment may seem like a piece of cake to someone whose life is filled with stuff that, at least to me anyway, appears like a very black day. There are so many variables in each life, that to classify an event as bad, or even a shade of bad, is dangerous or downright silly.

  So, I give a case in point. This from a blessed life, without a doubt, and an item that would not even fall on the scale of bad to a lot of folks. But it did cause me to look back and be thankful.

   Coming back from Gatlinburg and Chattanooga on Tuesday of this week, we decided to do another "courthouse run". We could leave Tennessee and drive through part of north Georgia, stop to visit a friend, and then continue on down through the central part of our state, stopping at various county seats to photograph some old courhouses. This idea was a "two birds with one stick" deal, as we could check off a few towns from our state's numerous counties, and miss the freeway driving at the same time.

   So we traveled to Chatsworth, Ellijay, Jasper and Canton before stopping for lunch in Cumming. We not only saw courthouses, but other sidelights in these towns as well. like these from Ellijay on that Tuesday morning:

   After a leisurely lunch with our friend in Cumming, we started south through Winder, Monroe, Madison and Eatonton, again catching courthouses and other miscellaneous stuff, such as these from Eatonton:

   By the time we finished a quick supper in Milledgeville, the sun had set and we still had many miles to go to get home. So we took off, down back roads, heading toward I-16 and the fastest way home. It was not all that fast and pretty late when we finally had a chance to sleep in our own bed.

  Now to get to the point of this long discourse. During all of the Tuesday driving, I had noticed the needle on the car temperature gauge keep creeping up when we were stopped in traffic and then settling back to normal as we drove at regular speeds. It never got bad,  just pointing out that something was amiss.

   Yesterday, as I drove to Brunswick for an appointment, I noticed a small clanking sound, accompanying this heating up again. After letting the car sit for a few hours, and trying the solution of adding some coolant to the engine, the sound was more pronounced. A couple of friends from the condo listened to it and deduced that I might have a water pump problem.

   Financially, this is not good, but when I look back at Tuesday, I realize that the situation could have been worse, a lot worse. I could play the "what if" game. How about all those hours on back roads, a lot of them in the dark? Even I-16 gets pretty lonely at night, and towns are few and far between. There were a lot of spots that we might not have liked to be if the pump went out and the car quit.

   So I look back and am thankful. Is this even a 2 on a scale of 10 "bad" events? No, but it does cause me to see how God can bless , even in a less than less-than-good situation.

   And I am thankful,

   AGAIN