Happy Thanksgiving, my friends! I hope you are all spending time with loved ones today, making memories and eating good food. Its a cool and rainy day here in NY and I’ve been enjoying slow quality time with family and loved ones. Laughs with those present and near, phone calls and smiles and video chats with those far away. More than anything today, I’m thankful for how healing and restoring it is to simply gather around a table with people you love and who love you back. I truly believe it is perhaps the best medicine available to us in life!
Today I just wanted to share some unedited, unfiltered thoughts. I’m writing this in one shot and hitting publish! I’m here with a simple reminder and a word of encouragement to lean into gratitude this Thanksgiving. I know not everyone looks forward to the holidays. It can be a bittersweet or just downright difficult time for many people- for a thousand reasons. Whatever it brings up for you, whatever you’re going through right now, I just want to acknowledge you and tell you that you are seen and loved and not alone. No matter how this holiday may be for you- whether filled with joy or pain, or a mix of the two, know that life will not always be this way. I hope that brings you inexpressible hope and also remind you to cherish the good things you have while you have them. More than anything, may it lead you to gratitude.
I recall a particular time in life where I didn’t feel I had much to be thankful for. The idea of giving thanks in all circumstances was lost on me (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Let’s be honest… thankfulness doesn’t always come naturally. It is hard sometimes to be thankful when life feels hard; yet, it is the command, the will of God for us to be thankful. If we consider how much God loves us and daily sustains us, being unthankful is irrational, even sinful. I remember writing in my journal during that time, tired of feeling discouraged and doing my best to encourage myself. I started writing down every thing I could think of that I was thankful for. No thing was too small. I thanked God for sunshine, cups of tea, a car to drive, clothes on my back, family, friends. As I wrote, I realized they weren’t small things at all. The goodness of God was written all over my life in both big and small ways. It led me to thanking God for present difficult circumstances and things I didn’t understand yet. Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV) says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God doesn’t do things the way I’d do them- and that in and of itself is something to be thankful for. It means life doesn’t have to look the way I think it should for it to be good. And God doesn’t have to move the way I think He should for Him to still be good. I found myself clinging to this. I preached to myself that just because I could not see the good in my circumstances didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
As I thanked Him for every thing in my life, I felt my hope and joy returning. I realized in that moment that my outlook on life was in my control. That my spirit was my responsibility. I saw that to choose to complain and to be bitter and unthankful, to stay miserable and angry, I would have to push past a page of blessings and decide to be unthankful. It would be a conscious choice. When I realized that was not a choice that lined up with who I wanted to be, I made a different choice. If the enemy can get us to focus on the negatives, we will miss the divine hand of God moving and orchestrating and ordering things in our lives.
In life right now, if you feel powerless in any area, the most powerful tool I know to fight frustration is gratitude. I encourage you to find a pen and a blank page and write down all of the things you are grateful for. Nothing is too small, because thanksgiving works exponentially. It builds upon itself. Its like French fries or lays potato chips- you can’t stop with just one! Load up on gratitude this holiday. Choosing to be thankful is an absolute game- changer. When your hands are tied, when you feel powerless to act or to decide, gratitude is a choice you always have.
Let’s not wait until Thanksgiving day to be thankful, as though thanksgiving were a season instead of a way of life. It is a way to freedom, to hope, to peace. May we choose well, may we choose gratitude. If you are reading this, you have at least one thing to be thankful for. Thank God for it and watch your thankfulness multiply. Thank Him for what He’s doing, for what He’s doing, and thank Him for all of the “not yet” things still to come.
Happy Thanksgiving, my friends! May you be blessed today and always!
Stephie Mill 