NATCHEZ — By her own admission, Barbara Murray has had a roller-coaster of a year, but that doesn’t keep her from being thankful.

A team trucker with her husband Billy for 12 years, Murray sold her house earlier in the year and moved into a new one.

“Getting into a small house from a big one was a great blessing,” she said.

But along the way she developed some back problems, and three months ago she was diagnosed with lymphoma.

“I’m in treatment for that right now,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a low-grade treatable type (of lymphoma), and I have got faith that it will all work out.”

This isn’t the first time Murray has developed cancer, nor is it the second.

“This is my third time to have cancer,” she said. “I’m 69-years-old, and God has led us through it.”

Though she has been treated for cancer before, this is the first time she has had to have chemotherapy, Murray said.

But even that has not gotten her down.

“Even with the medical problems, it has been a very blessed year,” she said.

Her faith has helped give her perspective, Murray said.

“There are people who have had so much more than (I have) who don’t have as much hope as I do, who don’t have as much to look forward to,” she said.

When she was first diagnosed, Murray admits she wasn’t sure how she would spend Thanksgiving.

“We weren’t sure what we were going to do, as far as treatment was concerned, but then Bethany — my daughter — called me and said, ‘Mama, I want to come home,’” she said.

So Murray spent Wednesday preparing for Thanksgiving.

And, of course, with the holidays comes another blessing — her five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. “They’re the light of my life,” she said.