thanksgiving

for years now, thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday. what's not to love about gathering together with friends for some good food, in celebration of being thankful?! thankfulness is in such short supply in our society that i think we ought to take every opportunity we can to reinforce attention being paid to it. besides, thanksgiving lacks most of the commercialism that has come to characterize much of Christmas and halloween.

this isn't to say our thanksgiving isn't filled with some tradition. first, for us, thanksgiving isn't a family affair (or, at least, it hasn't been in nearly a decade). well, actually, i suppose it is about family - a new family in christ. our goal is to have to have an intimate and celebratory gathering attended by old friends, new friends, and friends with nowhere else to go. for us this is a picture of the family that jesus calls us into by the cross. this is one of our favorite parts about thanksgiving - seeing who'll come. we start inviting people by september.

we have other traditions, too. hot cherry apple cider. crockpot BBQ meatballs starting around noon. butterball turkey from aldi. too much food. sharing stories of what we're thankful about. we don't watch too much football. but we'll usually stay up late and watch a movie. sometimes we'll even go out on friday to wayne county and drive the hines park light display ... but only when we're feeling crazy!

i must admit, though, as much as i love thanksgiving - and i do love it! - the holiday hasn't quite been the same since the departure of our three good friends who always used to come from Chicago. one couple just hasn't been able to come the last two years because of other obligations and we've lost contact with the other friend. he has cut ties with us, for no reason known to us. this is a point of great sadness for megan and i. we feel it particularly at thanksgiving. we miss his double chocolate chunk cookies. we miss the way he would turn off our cuckoo clock before he went to bed at night. we miss the way he would sit down and start philosophizing from the moment he got in the door until our other friends arrived after midnight. we miss him and thanksgiving isn't quite the same without him.

God blessed us this year with a wonderfully restful thanksgiving day. thank you, God!

we're still thankful for thanksgiving!