Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well here it is Thanksgiving morning. Our house is it's normal chaos this morning. We are spending the night tonight at my mom + dad's house and then will be spending tomorrow with my husband's parents. It should be .... um.... interesting to say the least. Both houses. Both places will be filled with people and stuff and food and children who are not on their best behavior if for no other reason than because they are not at home in their comfort zones.

This Thanksgiving holiday I am a new mom. I am a new creation in Christ. I have a new outlook on motherhood. And, I have to say, thanks to a speaker we had last week at MOPS, I have a new outlook on this Thursday Holiday.

Yes, the honeymoon is over after the H@H conference. I am not still in the afterglow of such great teachings. BUT, I have changed the way I parent my children. They are getting the fact that mommy does not yell anymore. When I say it... I mean NOW. Not in 2 minutes. I'm not going to repeat myself until I am hoarse. I mean now. Or consequences will happen. It's that simple. They say it takes 21 days to learn a new habit. Well, not if you're 3 or 4. Then it takes about 5 days before you start to go... "Um... this is how it is now. Maybe I should change my actions to match." They're getting there, slowly but surely.

As far as my thoughts about this day, the fact that I am even THINKING about this holiday is a switch. We had a FABulous speaker last week at MOPS. She spoke all about Thanksgiving, the origin of it, and being Thankful in our lives.

I had never given this Holiday a second thought. I was just like the rest of the country's population, in my lack of thought about it. It's not as if I was intentionally being disrepsectful, it had just never occurred to me what a SPECIAL day today is.

Our country was literally founded by the Pilgrims who came here to escape a Mad King who wanted the people to worship him. These settlers, 102 of them, set out on a ship, set out for a new world with no dreams of what could be on the other side of the world for them. They just knew they could not stay in service to a king who was not THE KING.

So they got on their little wooden boat. With one outfit each. With a ship of barrels of food that would not stay edible for more than a couple of days. With absolutely NO idea what awaited them. What a Gigantic leap of faith. To say, "We don't know where we're heading. But we can't stay here. So Lord, we're putting our lives in your hands, at the mercy of your sea and your providence. And we're going. We trust that You will help us reach whatever lies ahead."

Can you imagine? These people left their homes. Families, everything they knew, in search of something better. And they found this land. This place that they only knew from stories of other travellers who had been here on journies.

Their life was difficult, and they were unprepared for the new land. A friendly native showed them how to plant corn, kill and skin animals for food and clothing, and set them on the path of survival. This first Thanksgiving was in thanks to our Lord for his guiding hand that led them to this land, and kept them alive. Because they were faithful to follow the Lord's leading in leaving their former land, the Lord rewarded them with a way to survive.

And now, 385 years later, we have forgotten. The country has forgotten. Decorations on people's homes go from halloween one day to Christmas the next, with no thought to this day of thanks in between. This day has become merely a doorway to the Christmas shopping season. Merely an excuse to eat and socialize. A day that is for giving thanks to our Lord has become, like most other Holy Days, lost in the shuffle of secular life. No one gives a thought to it anymore. What used to be the Thanksgiving Day parades are now replaced with the name of the store that's sponsoring them. And heaven forbid they actually show you any floats that are in the parade on the tv. It is one continuous 3 hour long advertisement for the different shows that are on TV and on Broadway at the time.

This is totally heart breaking to me. We are given this day, by our country, to relax, to give thanks for all that we've been blessed with, and yet, we squander it on meaningless food preparations and feelings of dread over having to meet with family. Oh no-- heaven forbid we have to spend time with Family!! What ever will we do?

Well, for one, we will be thankful we have family to visit. We will be thankful we have a group of people who want to visit with us, who love us, regardless of our faults. Even if their displays of affection are not what ours are. Are not what we would have them be, at least we have them in our lives.

So today, this Thanksgiving Holiday, I am for the first time in my life, Giving Thanks to Our Lord. As this day was founded for me to do.

Happy Thanksgiving to You!!