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we had quite the dinner. turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, stuffing, cranberries…all the favorites and then some.

Thanksgiving is today, and I find myself more thankful this year than years prior. As i sit here and remember all the things we have done this year i feel pretty full…and not because we ate so much food today that we could all use a good run into town…literally. Full in a sense that i couldn’t want anything more in my life at this time. Maybe it is the bible study I did this fall {change my attitude} that is still so fresh in my mind, maybe it’s the new study I just started on contentment that is keeping me focused on daily gratitude. Maybe it’s my appreciation for family that has grown insurmountably over the year. Or maybe just how God has a way of moving in our lives..so subtly at times…one breath at a time… whether we want him to or not….always at his pace and not mine….teaching me to trust Him more and more.  Maybe it’s learning to remember that God has it all covered….even when…I do not and for that alone I can be thankful. I’m so thankful for my husband. His enduring love he shares with me daily. His hard work never going unnoticed in my eyes. His job that supplies our every need….allowing me to stay home…allowing me to take the kids and the neighbor kids to school…when bus 15 doesn’t show up because it broke down.  I’m so thankful for my kids and how they bless me with so much love at times i feel like i will burst. Their hugs, their stories their individual beings that are so unique and so different yet you just appreciate who they are becoming because it’s who they are.  I am so thankfully blessed I get goose bumps. Content. Happy. Blessed. It’s a good place to be.

I got this article on Thanksgiving from Walk in the Word :: The Weekly Walk by James MacDonald.I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. 

Thanksgiving

“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south… He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” – Psalm 107:1-9

Psalm 107 is all about thankfulness. Very specifically Psalm 107 repeats one verse four different times.

“O, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His wonderful works to the children of men.”

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.

Praise and gratitude are inseparable. Praise starts from the soles of our feet and comes up through the muscles and sinews and joints and organs of our bodies and it bursts from our throat. It’s with all our hearts that we give God thanks. It is not something shallow or frivolous, flippant or superficial. Gratitude is the deepest expression of the soul in love with God. And he says, “With all my heart I give You thanks.”

The original meaning of praise was “to give public acknowledgement.” It’s the thought of telling others about something that means much to us. Not the normal term for giving thanks.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not negative on gratitude. What really bugs me, though, is when people express their gratitude today, late in November and then return to their self-centered, dissatisfied, hopeless and pathetic outlook on life the other 364 days.

Gratitude is more than an annual ritual performed hastily before diving into the Thanksgiving meal. It’s more than a holiday decoration, more than a snappy word that rhymes with “attitude.” Of all the human emotions, gratitude is the most powerful. So powerful is gratitude, it can obliterate fear, hopelessness and doubt. Gratitude can heal a broken heart, slow the aging process and restore broken relationships. Gratitude creates hope and hope brings joy. It is in joy, not fear, that we find strength.

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