Thanksgiving: Tell a Story

Gratitude requires steely-eyed attention. We are never grateful for abstractions. We are grateful for particular events, persons, actions, beauties, "what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands." (To borrow from the First Epistle of John.) Gratitude is always told in the form of a story—my story. Why is that I am tempted to give thanks for broad-brush generalities? I expect to be asked today to rattle of a litany of thanks. And like many of you, I find it easy to turn to tried-and-true gestures that no one can get their hands or head around: God's grace. Family. Second chances. You know the drill.

There's nothing wrong with being thankful for God's grace—except we're never thankful for "God's grace" as a sweeping concept. When we feel thanks, it is for concrete, messy, hands-on stuff. Stuff that can't be said in a word or two, but requires a narrative.

I don't know about "God's grace." But I know that recently in the midst of a truly rough day, a friend called, and came over, and we ate dessert and laughed and watched a movie and hugged, and I was surprised to feel hopeful and able to face a painful situation again. It was a gift—a gift of friendship, but also of strength and hope.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes, "You are not separate from your life, and in that life you must find the goodness of God. Otherwise you will not believe that he has done well by you, and you will not truly be at peace with him." This, Dallas notes, takes work, time, training.

Gratitude is a disciplined, watchful eye over our actual lives for evidence that we have, beyond any reasonable expectation, been included in the life of God. It is hard work. We are trained to observe and note failure, loss, evidence that our world, our life, our body as they are could never house the glory of God. And then, to our befuddlement, there he is.

So, let's look closely. Let's take up the magnifying glass of faith and examine the mess of our experience, asking: what is God up to? Where have I seen him? Where does his absence beckon me further than I have been willing to go? Where does conflict invite me to love more deeply than I have dared? Where has sorrow invited me into greater hope than I thought possible? And where has joy sustained me along the way?

And then tell a story.

Recipe for a Happy Thanksgiving

Folded up in the back of my recipe box are greasy sheets of notebook paper filled with Mike's scrawling. Homemade stuffing. How to make turkey gravy. How to stuff the turkey. How to make a pie crust. All written during numerous phone calls with his mom between Denver and Chicago. They're from our first years of marriage, and those greasy pages have guided us through many a Thanksgiving production over the years. Early on, Mike's parents came for the holiday about every other year; eventually they moved here. My mom and extended family have always come, and year by year a baby or two joined the mix--a child of ours, a new cousin. For so many years the cooking happened in-between nursing and diaper changes, naps and play breaks. We set up assembly lines of bread and vegetable chopping, onion-simmering, turkey-cleaning. Grandparents came a day early for food prep, and year by year the boys began to grasp that Thanksgiving is all about lots of commotion, good smells, plans with family, hours of play time with cousins, games and sitting close with grandparents, and sometimes new, friendly faces.

If I'm honest, there have been tiring days and weeks getting ready for these gatherings. We've had plenty of cooking fiascos. Just last year the foil turkey pan was gouged with a knife and I found turkey juice and oil days later seeped down inside the cupboard. But it's also gotten a little easier over time. The recipes have become so familiar we don't have to pull them out and follow the steps. The boys help with food and place cards. It's become a traditional, anticipated season.

Not so in my own childhood. Holiday traditions took a turn when my parents split up and each year became a different combination of here and there and what and how. We gave up on tradition and, without saying it in so many words, simply accepted each holiday for what it brought and who we were with. Now, two of my siblings and one of Mike's also face this reality of back and forth with kids and ex-spouses. Once again, we all have learned to take the day as it comes.

When I think about Thanksgiving as a parent and as a moderately accomplished Thanksgiving chef who accepts any and all help, I come back to those gravy-stained recipes and realize that family love and grace, shared together and with others, is what holidays are meant to be in the spirit of Jesus. Tradition is wonderful when it fits. When that recipe doesn't work, flexing with one another and appreciating each hour for what it brings is really what it means to be grateful. No doubt all our families are stained and worn in one way or another. It's in unfolding those grease-covered pages of our lives and partaking together in whatever the day holds that we really live out with our kids the meaning of Thanksgiving.

Good Dirt vol. 1 is now available!

The print and PDF versions of Good Dirt: Advent, Christmastide & Epiphany are now available! The PDF is a free download available here. Print copies are at Amazon.com.

We are so excited to journey with you this year, starting with Advent on December 1st!

About Good Dirt

Good Dirt is a year long adventure for families desiring to grow in Christ and set the rhythm of their lives by the Seasons of the Church. Good Dirt will walk with families through a year of living the Seasons through family activities and information. Each day the family is rooted to Christ through a reading from one of the Gospels. Families will learn how to “Till,” “Plant,” “Water,” and “Weed” their own souls and the little souls that are in their home. Families will not only read about spiritual formation, but will live it out within the greatest social context any human is ever born into: their family. Over the duration of a year, families will practice the spiritual disciplines including the twelve disciplines that Richard Foster writes about in Celebration of Discipline and also others.