A Different Kind of Thanks-giving

 Thanksgiving hasn't looked like how I remember in awhile. 

All of my childhood and into my adulthood, I would gather with my immediate and extended family for a huge week of celebration at my older cousin's home. This coming together had been a tradition in the family for over sixty years, and I looked forward to it every year. With only a couple rare exceptions, we'd made it to almost all of them over time. But then things changed. The 2020 lockdowns happened and it looked like gathering on a zoom call to stay in touch. Then slowly, year after year, less and less relatives started showing up and we were unable to make it as well. This will be, for me and my immediate family, year six of missing this beautiful tradition and, what's even more sad, is that last year we heard there wasn't even a gathering at the place at all. Only a small get together the day after.  

I'd be lying if I said it hasn't pained me that the tradition is dying out. My heart hurts. I miss what it used to be. With every year, it's felt odd to not have some set plans for how we will celebrate. Trying to come up with new traditions of our own and gather with other friends has felt different and strange. And this Thanksgiving is about to get even more different... not because of family but because it represents yet another significant change in my life as I've always known it. We will be gathering at the home of dear family friends we've known for close to thirty years. I believe this is the first Thanksgiving we'll have celebrated together. And it's going to look different for all of us. This is the first year that the husband of this dear couple is no longer with us. A sudden medical emergency in September took his life at the age of 71, and we have all been figuring out what a new normal looks like without him. He was one of those irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind, memorable individuals whose stories and personality left an unforgettable impression on all he met. Losing him has felt like losing family for a lot of us, especially young people or middle-aged adults like me that grew up with him playing such a large role in their life. The loss has been a shock. 

This will be the first holiday season any of us have spent without him, and his widow wanted us to be together on Thanksgiving. It's just going to be her and her daughter-in-law and her granddaughters because her son is working that day and cannot join. They are the only family she has in the area, and she wants the table to be full. It will be the first time I've stepped foot in that house since we lost Kent. A home I've been coming to since I was nine years old. So many memories have been made here over the years... movie nights, dinners, Super Bowl parties. And soon, this house will be sold, and his widow will move to Indiana to be closer to family and this will all be just a past chapter in my history... in all of our history... and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Seeing the place he always sat... now empty... just may undo me. 

I've been trying to process and picture what this is going to feel like. I know we will all find it inside of ourselves to practice gratitude even in the face of loss, but this one is going to be difficult. Yet, it also is occurring to me that this is what it means to live out the command to "give thanks in all circumstances" because somehow, God's will is tied to us offering sacrifices of praise even when things feel oh so very broken and busted and just. not. right. More than feasts of turkey or viewings of football or even coupon deals that beckon, the call of God to give Him a grateful heart in the midst of your greatest losses and crosses is, by far, the biggest testimony of all. It's easy to give thanks when your life feels comfortable and normal and all seems like it should be or always has been. But when it's been totally upended and you have nothing left but tears and questions and heartache, how much harder yet more impactful the choice!

  

This isn't the first Thanksgiving I've spent with a grieving heart, and I'm certain it won't be the last. And what I've learned time and time again as I've circled around to this day every year is that the thanks that pleases God the most is the kind you offer on bended knees all year round. Not the sort you give on one day a year because the calendar gods said so but the type you give when it all comes crashing down on any day of the year and you ask God for the grace to somehow not grow bitter when His will feels so heavy and unknown. It is that kind of thanks that touches the heart of God because it comes from a place of rawness and authenticity. It comes from a yielded heart, not a full stomach. 

There's something powerful about people coming together around their reality and choosing to accept the plans of God and still believe Him to be good. Something about that puts feet to our faith as we come before God with empty hands and aching souls and still choose to be grateful, even for the ugly. To see the beautiful even when it feels so wrong. To look for the light even in the pitch black of darkness. Because these are the times when the presence of God shows up the most. The truth is, we don't think we need Him when we are full but we know we need Him most when we are shattered. And I don't know how else one can get through any tragedy if they don't have that anchor of the spirit to carry them through and give them hope. If they don't have a place to run to and a loving Savior to hold them, what else is there? 

Perhaps your Thanksgiving will look similar to all the others. You will gather where you always have and do what you've always done. Or maybe, like me, you'll be attempting to give thanks in the face of loss and pain and transition, finding your way through a new normal you didn't ask for. However you are celebrating this day, may I remind you that you still have much to be grateful for. It may not always be the lift you chose or the one you want, but it is still good... especially if God is writing the story. Even if this holiday holds more tears than laughter and the void left by whatever you've been through feels too great to ignore, He is there and there are gifts to be found even here. Treasures of the snow. Buried blessings in the suffering. 

Maybe giving thanks isn't really it's truest action until we give it from our lowest place and decide that we will be grateful to the Maker when what He has given is hard. Maybe this is real grace - a difficult gift redeemed by the choice to say God is good anyway. Yes... even when there's an empty chair.