This morning, I woke up in a bed given to me by someone I’ve met only once, at a wedding, more than a decade and a half ago. I came downstairs to a kitchen rented out to me by a couple whose name I know only from a lease agreement. I made cinnamon rolls for the family I did not create in the silence, using tools sent to me by a host of friends, some of whom have faces I have never seen.
This is my life. And I am thankful.
A year ago, I had nothing but the family. Even so, it was no more “mine” than it is now. We’ve entered the season of parenting where to deny the lack of hold I have over any of these people is to live in a kind of blindness I can’t bring myself to embrace. But a year ago … it was us, without walls to call our own, huddled in the open home of family members relieved to see us even in our distress. It was us, not sure what the next steps sure. Not even sure, to be honest, if we were grateful or not.
Today I am thankful, and keenly aware that everything I have — even those few, small things purchased with “our” means — comes from God. Working through His people, buoying us in His hands … all of it. Not ours. His.
Chances are good, your life does not look like mine this Thanksgiving Day. Chances are, you bought your own dining room table. It did not come to you on the back of a truck driven by the father of a friend, donated to a ministry. Chances are, you chose your dishes. They did not arrive in boxes fresh from the attic of family and friends, cast off but still more than serviceable. Chances are, it’s your name on the mortgage, or, at the very least, you did not choose your home in a desperate one week window only to find later that there was no better place for you to land. Chances are the turkey you will serve today was not purchased through the support of those who feel the value in keeping missionary families on the field, even when the field is both home and away.
Please, don’t let this fool you. Don’t let your effort, your choices, your ability to put in hours and pull out a paycheck make you forget the one thing I have learned and lived so clearly this past year: it is not yours. If every good and perfect gift comes from above (James 1:17), then the life you lead is formed not by the things you curate into your days, but by the hand of a Father who lavishes His love on you. And what you see today? It’s all His gift… even if you think it’s not.
So give thanks. Give thanks for the mouths you will feed. The aching feet at the end of a day spent standing at the stove. The chance to have spaghetti this year instead of turkey. Give thanks for the ruckus of too many cousins, and for the obnoxious relative whose laugh shakes the walls. Give thanks for the timing of side dishes being off, and for no more room in the oven. Give thanks for not enough room at the table, or for the space to sit quietly, just you two, looking into the same face you said “I do,” to fifty years, five kids, and twenty grandkids ago.
Go to bed tonight full: full of good food, yes. But even more full of gratitude that this is your life. With all of its dents and bruises, with all of the things you might change if you could. This is His gift to you. Give thanks.