On Being Thankful

It is Thanksgiving Day 2019. So far, honestly, 2019 has had its challenges for me. 
It has been equally challenging for many other people I know. 
Identifying the blessings to be thankful for is important today.

Thanksgiving was born when the Pilgrims who founded the new America gave thanks to God for a successful growing season and harvest, by holding a great feast - even though half of their numbers had died during the previous harsh winter. The Pilgrims were joined in the celebration feast by Native Indians - even though many of their people had died of plague during the prior year. Nonetheless, they all were thankful.

Here in the U. S., we often hear the mantra that we have so much to be thankful for, certainly in comparison to many destitute peoples and areas. Yet, perhaps what is even more important is to recognize that, in spite of hardships experienced in the year prior, God does provide blessings worthy of thankfulness. Thanksgiving is specifically meant for that time. Even during the Civil War, a time of much hardship among families, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving. It may have been difficult to find things to be thankful for during that turmoil, but that is the essence of Thanksgiving.

So, I look back at my 2019 when my own Mother, for whom I was a caregiver on increasing levels over the past decade, succumbed to a terrible disease and went to be with her Lord. I can’t deny that it was very difficult dealing with Mother over the last year, on many levels. I think the main reason that I didn’t give up is because she didn’t give up. It was also very heart-wrenching to see her suffer in so many ways, and frustrating that I could not fix it. But, my frustrations were nothing compared to hers, which were on a whole other level. Yet, she set an amazing example of a faithful woman who never lost her devotion to her God.  My grieving over her death has been much more difficult than I anticipated. And today, on day 104 since she passed, I encounter the beginning of the holidays in the first year to spend them without my Mother.

And yet, I am thankful. I thank God for a multitude of great blessings in my life. But this particular Thanksgiving Day, I am most thankful that my Mother can breathe now; that she is free to walk around, enjoy the things she loves like gardening, be with her family who have passed before her. She is with loved ones like her own mother, who died when Mom was only two years old, and the baby brother who died with her mother. In Mom’s final days, she saw some of those people in her own mind’s eye, and even spoke to them by name. Because my mother was so young when her birth mother passed away, she never really knew her and had no real memory of her. In her final days, Mother described seeing the lady in the white dress who was with a little boy. She talked about this vision quite a bit before she passed. It was my sister Kimberly who suggested that the lady in white must be our Mother’s own birth mother and the little boy must be the baby who passed away with her mother in childbirth. I believe that is so. That gives me another reason to be thankful, that my Mother is able to be with her own birth mother, a blessing that I probably took for granted most of my life, and that my Mother never enjoyed. I’m thankful to God that Grace Elizabeth, my Mother’s birth mother, was waiting for her and that they will spend eternity together.

That leads me to my most thankful thought this morning. Just the other day, in thinking through the profound sadness I feel, and while listening to a Christian music song on the radio in the car, for the very first time it occurred to me that I would actually see my Mother again in Heaven. A lifelong Christian from a very young age, I have no idea why I had not relied on that reality before now. I have been so sad that my Mother is gone, that she is no longer on earth with me, that the rest of my life is before me without her involvement, that I simply had not extended my thoughts to my own afterlife.

Above all, that is the one thing I am most thankful for this Thanksgiving Day. I am grateful for all of the love in my life, my friends and family, the incredible material blessings that I have been given here on earth, and opportunities that God continues to give me. And, I am most grateful and thankful for the realization that I will see my Mother again. Just knowing that truth comforts me beyond description. So, I will live my life as she did, in faithfulness to God, without rush or looking or hoping for tomorrow to be here sooner, but with the realization that today is important in itself, and has its own meaning and purpose. I am thankful to you, God, for all of 2019.