Today, some of us will stare at that turkey carcass lying in our fridge and think, “Aren’t you gone yet?” Turkey salad, turkey tetrazzini, turkey pot pie. Turkey schmurkey.
Some of us will glance at the calendar and wonder how we’re going to survive the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s gauntlet. It looks like an ascent up Mt. Everest.
Some of us who enthusiastically stimulated the economy yesterday will fret today about how we’re going to pay the proverbial piper next month.
Wait, can I please call a time out? Before we move past Thanksgiving and throttle up into Christmas hyperdrive, can I propose something radical?
I want to suggest that for the next year, from this Thanksgiving until next, we all choose to be consciously thankful for something, or many things, every day, no matter what.
I believe it could change our world. I know it could change our lives.
Pastor/author James MacDonald says this about an attitude of gratitude: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
It’s true. I know it. I’ve lived it.
Everybody encounters rough stretches of road before they get to the finish line. So far, most of mine have involved medical challenges.
(Free tip: If you ever hear a doctor say “barium enema,” run for your life.)
Genetics, misfortune, and years spent pounding around in the blazing sun on hard tennis courts have turned my body into a train wreck. Sixteen surgeries and countless hideous tests and procedures have sometimes threatened to suck me down into a dark place.
Thankfulness has been my life preserver.
It isn’t just “nice” to find and focus on something to be thankful for, it’s essential, even and especially in the midst of the toughest stuff.
When I overcome the fleshly desire to wallow in my problems, I can always find many things to be thankful for. So many. Topping the list is God’s goodness and His assurance that He is in control and will always supply the strength and grace I need to get through each challenge one day, one hour, one minute at a time.
Some friends of ours moved to Hawaii a few years ago and shortly thereafter, the wife, Wendy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, she’s cancer-free now, but the treatments were difficult and the outcome uncertain for awhile.
Mutual friends visited the family and reported: “Every day Wendy sees a rainbow out her kitchen window in the mountains. Every day. But every day she acts like it’s the first rainbow she’s ever seen.”
Wendy has learned to thankfully savor every morsel of life.
I have another friend, a single mom, who struggled financially for years before establishing her now-thriving business. During those lean years, this woman and her son sacrificed and persevered. When my friend finally opened her new business, her young son proudly declared the office was “five cartwheels wide.”
He knew because he had cartwheeled across that office in thankful celebration.
What if we start measuring life in rainbows and cartwheels? Not by what we’ve lost, but by what we’ve learned. Not by what we’re missing, but by what we have. Not by what is wrong, but by what is right.
What if we purpose to milk every drop of wonder out of every day and to see every blessing like we’re seeing it for the very first time?
Thankfulness may not change things, but it surely can change us.
“In everything give thanks…” (1 Thessalonians 5:18a)