Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2012 dawned clear and bright and early and with great excitement around our little yellow house. We do love holidays, after all!

Little girls excited about what clothes they would wear, boys eagerly packing "football gear" for a highly anticipated family turkey bowl, me relishing the joys of a day set before me with no agenda beyond being.

Breakfast was enjoyed in lovely morning sunlight. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was watched while I soaked, trimmed, and painted 3 sets of little girl nails and a little babe napped. Baskets were filled with pies and breads and dip, jackets were hurriedly thrown on, and we were off!

A short jaunt down to my older sister's home for our first ever Thanksgiving celebration there.

From that point on, the day was just the kind of day I love: foosball and ping pong ball and pool, girls snuggled in a guest room bed watching Little Bear, gourmet cheese and crunchy apples and cranberry bread and coffee, candles and pretty china and Pilgrim place cards, pregnant sisters and far-away sister and little people everywhere, football outside and football on TV, mounds and mounds of all the best traditional foods, singing and laughing and playing games around the kitchen table.

At one point I looked around the room, full of many of the people who are nearest and dearest to my heart, and I felt so rich just to be able to know them all, let alone call them family.

This year:

I'm thankful for plenty.
I'm thankful for forgiveness for me.
I'm thankful for freedom to forgive others.
I'm thankful for lovely things.
I'm thankful for how He uses even hard things.
I'm thankful for His love.
I'm thankful for His plan.
I'm thankful for relationship with others, made possible because of relationship with Him.

I'm thankful for days like today, a pause in the routines and demands of regular life and activity; a chance to stop and truly take stock. He goes above and beyond, over and over and over again, in loving and relentless pursuit of my heart and devotion.

These are the gifts, He is the Giver.

May I never love what I receive more than I love the One from whom I am receiving.