This Thanksgiving Week, What I Needed to Hear

This is the third time today I have started my Monday post. The kids are with their dad this weekend, and I got up this morning before church hoping to get the rough draft written, to no avail. Each time I started, it felt wrong.

My daughter is turning thirteen this week, which is monumental. I thought about writing her a letter, which I started, and then stopped. I have things I want to say to my girl and I could have filled several blog posts with all that I feel about being a mother. But, it didn’t seem right to post those sacred words for all to read. I do want to say I am proud of Emma. She is long and lean like a gazelle, beautiful and resilient like a young woman from another era, she is self-assured and good. She wrote a short essay the other day for class, and her teacher read it out loud. She has a way with words, persuasive in speech. She’s interested in the state of the world, in her moral code, and in the everyday things that make someone a good friend. She laughs and plays, she does her homework, she likes to read pegasus novels, and she can do people’s nails like she was raised in a beauty salon. I’m thankful to have the rare and sweet privilege of raising a young woman in this time in our history. I hold the honor close to my heart and pray for help every day.

Then, I started a blog post about gratitude and how gratitude is a choice. But it felt trite and fake. I’m thankful. I have a good job, a beautiful family. I am going to a church that makes sense to me. I am starting to look forward to Sunday mornings. I’m making new friends, tending to the old friendships I’ve had for years, and I’m writing little bits of a new novel. Life has had terrible heartache and I’m thankful to have lived through pain, to have walked through some deeply sad valleys and come to understand that I honestly need God, that most of the joy in life comes from the ordinary simple things of everyday living, not the great moments of success. I used to think that I would be perfectly happy if I could get this or that straightened out, and so I would work on this or that, over manage everything and everyone around me, and still wind up disappointed. I’m coming to realize that life is about sunrises and sunsets, long walks, good books, talks with old friends, a phone call from my mom or dad, a lover’s kiss, a husband’s gentle hand squeeze of assurance, a child’s prayers at bedtime, or the lighting of the candles before dinner.

The other night, as I was putting one of my kids to bed, I glanced out the window. No cloud in the sky. The moon hung suspended in mid-air with so much repose, I had to go outside. John and I walked out to the dock. We stared up at the night and counted the stars. The evening was crystal clear, the air was cold against my cheeks, the water lay calm and dormant, and the moon’s light shimmered off the still glass. I am thankful for that moment.

Today at church, after reading a bunch of the nation’s news and some of the Facebook world, I crashed into despondency. Can everything really be happening the way it’s going? Ugh. I didn’t know what to write. I couldn’t find the words. I go from wanting to mother everyone and tell the world to just get along … to this insatiable need to hide and disappear and read novels, hibernate with really good buttery popcorn. (Which is what I did most of yesterday.) But then, as I sat in church and sang about vision and life and hope and goodness, I decided to write what I need to hear. So here goes …

You are deeply and wonderfully loved. Your story is not over, it’s just beginning. What looks like overwhelming disappointment and shattered dreams is the stuff God will use to restore you and make your life into something staggeringly whole and life-giving. Whatever it is that feels like it’s just that one thing too much –be it holidays with or without your kids, or with a relative that brings out the absolute worst version of you, that always says the perfectly wrong thing and you just know this year it’s going to tip you over the edge and you might end up causing the biggest scene your family never wanted. Maybe you don’t have the money to buy the food you really want to bring and you’re pissed off about being poor one more year. Will there ever be more than enough? Maybe you’re just not sure you have the energy to do it all this year. You are tired. Or maybe this is most likely going to be your last holiday season … you went to the doctor and it wasn’t good news. You’re trying to be thankful, but really you’re just seething mad that life has dealt you such a raw blow.

You are deeply and wonderfully loved. I believe God is ever so proud of you. I believe God has carried your tears around in canning jars, those ones that say Mason on the front of them, and I believe with all my heart that God cheers you on. Smiles when you walk into a room. You. Are. Here. Breathe. In and out. Look up at the night sky and let the glory of the firmament overwhelm you. God is near, not far away, and is on your side. Always.

There is verse after verse in the Bible that tell about God setting a table, with good food and good wine, with bread and olive oil, and a whole lot of people. There is room for you at that big beautiful table … God sets the table wide and long and makes a great big grand invitation for you to take a seat and let your soul delight in the richest of fare.

Let us go in the strength we have and find the courage to let God’s love satisfy our weary souls this day, this week, this Thanksgiving.

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