November is the month of thankfulness. With Thanksgiving at the end, it is a month we Americans usually spend listing the things we are thankful for on social media, or making cute decorations for our Thanksgiving day festivities.
Spending “thankfulness month” in another country has been a very eye opening experience for me. Sure, I’m thankful for all the things I’m normally thankful for: family, friends, life itself, privilege, etc. But this month I am also thankful for a few new things.
Cambodia is a country that has been torn apart by war, corruption, and genocide. As I walk the streets every day (or bike, since that’s my mode of transport this month) I am acutely aware of the terror that took place on these very streets not so long ago.
In the 70s, the Khmer Rouge- led by Pol Pot, overthrew the government and began executing the educated, middle class city-dwellers. The Khmer Rouge believed this faction of people had been influenced too heavily by the West and went against the agrarian society they were going for. Roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, foreigners, artists, anyone who spoke French, anyone who seemed intellectual (wore glasses) , ethnic minorities (Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai), religious minorities (Muslim, Buddhist, Christian), and government personnel were murdered in order to force Cambodian people back into a farming, socialist model.
I had the privilege to spend my month in Battambang, which very much feels like a large village. There isn’t much technology, almost nothing modern or Western-influenced. It hasn’t been hard to imagine life in the 70s here because it still feels like the 70s. Bear with me, I know I wasn’t alive then, but it isn’t hard to fathom a time with less than what we live with today in the USA.
All month I thought about things that I’m thankful for. My list is very different this year- primarily because I’ve been on the race and I don’t have many of the things that normally build my thankful list- but very much in part because of my experience in Cambodia.
This year, I’m thankful that I have grandparents. So many people my age and younger don’t have grandparents because that generation was wiped out.
I’m thankful that I can walk through my hometown and not have to worry if there are landmines buried in the ground under my feet; relics leftover from a gruesome past.
I’m thankful for a government that doesn’t want to kill me or my friends and family.
This year I’m thankful that I’ve never known famine, or warfare in my front yard. I’m thankful that my siblings haven’t been ripped away from me, and that I get to enjoy time with my parents.
I’m thankful that I can work, wear, believe, and do what I want (within reason).
I am thankful to be a Westerner, and moreover an American- because of how much privilege and freedom that being such affords to me. Truly- Americans have it made and we so often forget that.
I’m so very thankful for stability and infrastructure in my country. I’m thankful that even though the US government seems shaky sometimes, and people might not agree with or about the person in leadership, that there IS a government that is overall trustworthy.
Most of all- I’m thankful to be alive. I am so humbled to live in Cambodia this month and do life with people who have experienced a kind of heartbreak and horror that I will probably and hopefully never experience.
I am thankful for God, my Father and King. He has blessed me, protected me, provided for me, given me daily breath, and created a life for me that I’ll never earn or deserve. I am thankful that Jesus bled and died on the cross to save me from punishment that I do deserve. How great is our God that He gives us what we don’t deserve, and saves us from what we do deserve.
Blessed be His name.
