A Grateful Heart: A Thanksgiving Tale
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving is a holiday where family and friends can come together and actually speak to each other face to face for hours on end (for better or worse). Thanksgiving is also an opportunity to gorge ourselves with exponential amounts of food, which we do not allow ourselves to eat any other time of year. Since food is one of my issues (see my F – Food blog in the blog archives), I clearly enjoy any holiday that encourages over indulging in any and all kinds of foods. It is not only food though. What other Thursday at noon is wine and cocktail drinking not only socially acceptable, but encouraged?! Well, it must be a cause for celebration then! (Public Service Announcement: Please drink responsibly people, it really kills my Thanksgiving vibe when people get trashed and kill the Thanksgiving mood. Our good friends at Uber and Lyft will accommodate you if you do get intoxicated, but do try to be respectful and not get completely wasted in the spirit of Thanksgiving enjoyment.) Not only is the actual Thanksgiving meal enormous, overindulgent and flowing with all types of beverages, but then there is…DESSERT!!! You know what I love? Sugar and carbs. You know what I should not eat a lot of? Sugar and carbs. So on Thanksgiving, what will I eat a lot of? Sugar and carbs!!! In fact, I will not even feel bad about my gluttonous behavior…well, at least not until the next morning when I try to hit up seven different classes at the gym to work off all the sugar and carbs. So what you are saying is that Thanksgiving is all about overindulgences? Well…it is an American holiday. Thanksgiving is not all about overindulgences, it is about a great many things for a great many people. However, I would like to recognize before I go any further that I understand and support those of you that do not celebrate Thanksgiving due to the genocidal colonialism that Thanksgiving represents to many. If you take a stand against the holiday because you do not want to commemorate the Pilgrims due to the raping, pillaging, and disease they brought to this country, I definitely understand and I am with you.
As a descendent of the Europeans that arrived on Plymouth Rock, it is a sad remembrance for me. I imagine I have what people would call white guilt. I enjoy white privilege for sure (if you are white and you do not realize you enjoy white privilege, let me be the one to tell you that you do – because you are white), but I definitely have white guilt too. Guilt that my ancestors, perhaps not all of them, but many of them found themselves superior to other people groups. Why is that exactly? They escaped Europe because of religious persecution, which initially was great, as no one should be persecuted for their religion. Alas, the sinful human heart is quick to forget. They traveled across an entire ocean to a new land only to persecute those who indigenously occupied the land. Now THAT is messed up! The Pilgrims escaped persecution only to come to a land where they treated our indigenous brethren the exact way they did not want to be treated. What right does any person or people group have to conquer or take over a place inhabited by others? Why is the concept of conquering so ingrained in human history? When does covetousness and the thirst for power supersede what is right? How is it possible that people can experience oppression and persecution and their solution to getting out of that state is to oppress and persecute others? Thanksgiving as a day ultimately became a celebration because the Pilgrims knew that they should have all been dead because of the treacherous ocean travel, the unpredictable weather in the new land, disease from exposure to different viruses and bacteria (including, but not limited to sexually transmitted diseases) and frankly they realized they probably could/should have gotten killed at various points. So as a result, the Pilgrims were thankful.
So no, the original holiday that is Thanksgiving is not a holiday that I am looking to commemorate. Instead, I celebrate a day in November, which is designated a national holiday and is also recognized by my current employer as a day they are going to pay me without actually coming into the office. I take this day in November, called Thanksgiving, and I use it to express my thankfulness of being an evolved survivor of my ancestors, in addition to all the other reasons I am truly thankful. I do not celebrate what my ancestors, the pilgrims, celebrated. I acknowledge that I would not be here if it was not for them, but I do not celebrate what they celebrated. I celebrate the privilege of living in the first world, where I have shelter, food, clean water and clothing – basic human needs. I celebrate the immense blessings that I have, despite my bougie attitude that craves this, that and the other thing. I celebrate the things that I did not work for and do not deserve, but that I am so thankful to have. Although my daily life works to maintain the gifts that I have and to obtain more, I stand on the shoulders of so many others that have put me in a place where I can be a recipient of all I do not deserve. I absolutely do celebrate religious freedom and I am so thankful that I can be a Christian and be able to practice my faith freely in this country. I will be thankful that my freedoms have come at a very high cost. God has given me much and to whom much is given, much is required. As such, I want to take a day in November to recognize how much I am grateful for.
My prayer for this month has been to have a grateful heart. Mind you, I recognize that I should always have a grateful heart and I do make an effort to do so. However, I am in fact a flawed human and I am not always grateful. To consciously be grateful, thankfulness has to be constantly on your mind. Even when the job is wearing you down or it disappears, student loan and collections calls are non-stop, your child is getting bullied at school, your significant other and you are fighting, your family is a mess, someone has cancer, you just feel like a screw up or you cannot see past your current situation – there is still SOMETHING to be grateful for! Refer back to basic human needs, if you have basic human needs you can be grateful. If you are reading this blog right now then that means you have internet access in some capacity, so you either have electricity or a cell tower nearby. Do you currently have a roof over your head, even if it is technically someone else’s roof? Are you dressed (I mean you could read the blog naked I suppose, but I am guessing you have some clothes despite your choice to read in the nude)? Do you have toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo or soap? Did you eat today? Are you breathing? Did you wake up this morning?
Even for those of you who are in the deepest of depressions and I know some of you are, you still have something to be grateful for. I really hope right now that you know that you have something to be grateful for. I will take it one step further even, if you do not feel like you have ANYTHING to be grateful for, know that I am grateful for you. Yes, I am grateful for you, whether I know you or not, whether I have met you or not - I am grateful for you!!! I am grateful for you because God has given me the opportunity to write to you today and to speak to you through the vlog and the blog. Do you know that you are huge part of what I am grateful for in this life? Do you know that I prayed for so long, for so many years to get to write and speak to you through my writing today? I did. I prayed for so long. I prayed that you would be reading this right now. God gives us each gift and talents, I wanted the ability to use mine to talk to you right now and every other time I sit down to write. This blog is not for me, it is for you. The blog is for you to hear whatever it is you need to hear from the experiences I have had and for what God has allowed in my life. I have been given the great responsibility to pour out my heart on these blogs and hopefully provide some laugher too. To be able to have started this blog and have a dialogue with you, I am so grateful for that. I am so grateful for YOU!!!
Happy Thanksgiving Loves!
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked.” Luke 12:48b (NET)
“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4 (CSB)
“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” 1 Timothy 4: 4-5 (ESV)
Friends - if you are deeper in the Bell Jar and you need more than just these few words today, here are some resources to help. I really just felt like I needed to leave these here for someone, if that is you please use these. Remember you are loved and I am grateful for you!!!
National Suicide Prevention Hotline (800)273-8255 https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (800)662-4357 https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/
National Hopeline Network (800)784-2433 https://hopeline.com/