Thankful
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all of my American friends are enjoying this day with family and friends. Thanksgiving has always been one of our favorite holidays. Growing up, it was a gathering of family, with my mom’s large extended family gathering together. Fun times with cousins and lots of good food marked my Thanksgiving memories.
After moving overseas, we were far from our immediate family almost every Thanksgiving. In our new city on the other side of the world we spent Thanksgiving with our “found family”. Our kids learned to be grateful for their honorary uncles, aunts and cousins.
For 19 years we lived in that city where Turkey was hard to come by, carrot souffle replaced sweet potato casserole and the pumpkin for the pie had to be cooked and prepared ahead of time, since it didn’t come in a can. Thanksgiving was one of many things that were more difficult living as an exile in a foreign land.
Today, we celebrate Thanksgiving by not celebrating it. We’ll have a small gathering tomorrow with one American and a few other friends, but we now live on an island where there are very few people even aware there is such a thing. A few friends who know we’re American have sent messages and soon all of our friends in the US will be waking up, cooking and eating and most likely, posting all the pictures of their gatherings together.
Our three children gathered last weekend with relatives to celebrate (along with our two bonus children who married into the family). I was filled with joy to see them together, having fun and sharing this holiday without us. I expected I might be more sad than I was, but it really wasn’t a moment of sadness. They’ve gone off into the world and they’re all doing well. It was a blessing to see them all together. I was thankful.
Thankfulness is a powerful force that helps us keep the right perspective on life. Sometimes we receive truly wonderful blessings that are obviously far more than we deserve (like our salvation). Other times it might be just enough to provide for our needs. Finding ourselves grateful in these circumstances is good, but somewhat expected.
What defines a grateful spirit is being able to find things to be thankful for when things don’t turn out the way we’ve planned. We can choose to find things to thank the Father for, even when the thing we want the most to happen turns out differently.
We just “celebrated” the fifth anniversary of one of those events in our lives, my wife’s stroke. She documented her recovery and the experience here. That day changed our lives permanently, but we continue to walk in grace with the challenges and changes that brought. She’s still here with us, and we get the joy of continuing to serve the Father together on this earth.
Soon, I’ll have the third anniversary of the night I flew to the other side of the world, only to be detained and deported, knowing I was permanently banned from my home of the last 19 years. In the midst of that, I found things to remember and things to be grateful for. Here are a few of the lines I wrote while locked up in a holding cell before deportation:
I’m grateful for many laughs with local friends.
I’m grateful for trying to be fully present in my new home and not trying to live like I was in America.
I’m grateful for so many friendships over the years.
I’m grateful for tea and the way it’s the perfect way to sit down together with old friends and new acquaintances.
I’m grateful for the tradition of having a long local breakfast with friends.
I’m grateful for my local friends who would drop everything to do literally anything with you.
I’m grateful for friends and co-laborers who taught us how to persevere through suffering as they dealt with cancer and other trials.
I’m grateful for those who do a thankless job to make my job easier.
I’m grateful for prayer and its power to change everything.
I’m grateful for trips to the island.
I’m grateful for public transportation and how it improved over the years.
I’m grateful for our church family, who our family loved and loved our family.
Mostly I’m grateful for a great God who uses frail creatures of dust like us to accomplish His purposes.
I was in lockup there for about 24 hours. It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what I prayed for, but it was a time to reflect on the things I was thankful for. My life has been filled with many twists and turns, but looking back there are few things I would change. The things I would change don’t take away from the facts that God has given us a joyful life and it is right for us to be thankful for the things we’ve done and seen.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
This is the model of life I want to live. Not because it is more pleasing to God, but because it’s a better way. It is better to filled with joy. It is better to be thankful. God’s will for us is to live with that perspective. I hope you’ll take time on this Thanksgiving Day to reflect on God’s goodness in both the good times and the bad. He is faithful and we can be grateful. This is the way…
Originally published at http://seeinggodclearly.com on November 23, 2023.