Thankfulness

2020 has been quite the year of first time stressors we have never known, but when good friends and family sit down at a table for a meal the crazyness of this year seemed to take a pause. This year we did just that, gathering a small group of people to eat and enjoy each other’s company. Life felt like something more normal.

When we got married in 1980 i was determined to take thanksgiving day dinner and stake my claim to gather the whole family. Partly it was a wish not to visit multiple houses for multiple dinners, and partly a challenge to actually cook a turkey for the first time myself. But there was a special sense of joy as i finally sat down and looked around the table to see all those faces, and the table filled with wonderful food. And it was a special time afterward with the women of the family wanting to help with the dishes, and packing up the food. I miss those moment… and memories like the time one drumstick went missing… we could not account for it, and discovered it the next day, dragged down the basement by our cats. LOL!!

Beyond the food and fellowship for me the days after thanksgving are a tme of reflection. I am so thankful for the time to remember all of the people who have sat at our table over the years. Thanksgiving dinner was the last time the family enjoyed sitting down to dinner with my mom in 1992. She passed on only 2 weeks later. And it was the last sit down meal we had with my father in law in 2006, as he passed on in January 2007. Good friends joined us over the years, and moved away, or started families that took them in a different direction. And one year in the 1990s we had several sweet church ladies join us because they were alone. All are in heaven now.

Thanksgiving has been a bell-weather of our lives… when we gather, and celebrate our lives, our thankfulness and our joy of not only feeding people but providing a safe haven of rest for the day it seems that all is right in the world even when everything else is chaotic.

As we finish off the last month of this chaotic and challenging year I want you to know i am thankful for you. And i am thankful for simple joys like eating a meal together, or just chatting on the phone.