Thankful for Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving.  A wonderful all-American holiday.  I love the holidays and it seems so appropriate to start them with the Thanksgiving holiday, a time to gather as family and to reflect and to give thanks for our past and our future and for all our blessings.

This Thanksgiving feels strangely different to me though.  I guess it starts with the realization that this is our last Thanksgiving in Tennessee.  I am looking forward to moving and to spending more time with family in the Chicago area, but I have to admit that Nashville has been just what I needed for the past eight years.  We haven't had a lot of friends here and it has usually just been our family.  In some ways, I think that is good.  It has helped us to bond and strengthen our family relationships and to help us to count on each other when times got tough.  I will spend my last Thanksgiving in Tennessee with a  gratefulness and fondness of the holidays that we have spent here.

I also am coming to grips with the fact that next Thanksgiving is the first Thanksgiving that our boys will not be living at home and will be coming home (hopefully) to visit Dena and me for the holidays.  This is the last year that the boys are supposed to be home.  From now on, each Thanksgiving will be a blessing that we can spend together.  It makes me even more thankful for this year.

So as we gather around the TV for the traditional Thanksgiving Day parade and we eat our traditional meal and talk about the memories of Thanksgiving past with Grandma Martin's wonderful cooking, I think it will be a bittersweet time for me.

But most of all, I will be thankful for this holiday together as family and hopeful of the possibility of spending more Thanksgivings together in the future.
  

A Thanksgiving Day Prayer 

Lord, so often times, as any other day

When we sit down to our meal and pray

We hurry along and make fast the blessing

Thanks, amen. Now please pass the dressing

We’re slaves to the olfactory overload

We must rush our prayer before the food gets cold

But Lord, I’d like to take a few minute more

To really give thanks to what I’m thankful for

For my family, my health, a nice soft bed

My friends, my freedom, a roof over my head

I’m thankful right now to be surrounded by those

Whose lives touch me more than they’ll ever possibly know

Thankful Lord, that You’ve blessed me beyond measure

Thankful that in my heart lives life’s greatest treasure

That You, dear Jesus, reside in that place

And I’m ever so grateful for Your unending grace

So please, heavenly Father, bless this food You’ve provided

And bless each and every person invited

Amen!

-Scott Wesemann

Happy Thanksgiving!