Thanksgiving and What it Means

God has given us so much to be thankful for over the years. His mercy and guidance have always abounded. Its only when we become ungrateful and reject His love and Providence that things begin to get out of control. Not relying in His eternal power is a sin we all have to fight against. It's amazing how easily we fall into the same old pattern over and over again.  
    We were so excited for this week because Mom's parents were coming down for Thanksgiving, we spent most of the week getting ready for them to come. Lots of baking, cleaning out the guest/ storage room, major deep cleaning, cleaning out the freezers for a beef that they were bringing with them. My Grandpa raises a few cows every year for beef on a piece of land that he had inherited. When we got ready to do the freezers, mom decided that this was a good time to clean out the summer kitchen too.  All that to say, we were exhausted by the end of the week.
     My Grandpa had just won a seat as the County Commissioner in Montezuma County, Colorado so we were ready to celebrate. They arrived on Tuesday evening right around dark, every one piled out to help them unload the meat.
    The next morning we had a late breakfast and caught up on each others news for most of the day. We just had a very relaxing day. We did a little bit of baking, but mostly enjoyed each others company. Until mid-afternoon when we got the news that Dad had shot himself in the knee with a nail gun. He was taken to the ER by his partner and mamma went up there. He ended up having to have surgery to get it out and was there all night. He just barely missed his knee cap and the nail went all the way through the bone.

Thanksgiving morning dawned, but nobody saw it because we all slept in. It was a beautiful day so Zach and Kacy went riding for a couple of hours to work up an appetite for lunch. We were planning on having a Thanksgiving lunch and then snack on the leftovers for the rest of the day. Just after Mama and Daddy got back, Janessa felt suddenly sick and only made it to the girls' bathroom and vomited in the sink. And that made the plumbing in that bathroom quit working. We also haven't had any hot water  in that side of the house for months. Dad was trying to work through the problem and in the process busted the pipes under the sink and we now really had a terrible mess.  Without hot water clean up was very difficult at best.  Grandpa had a 3-day meeting in Colorado Springs when he got back home.  It was a very important meeting he couldn't miss, or be sick at. So to keep him from getting exposed to all of this and miss his trip, they chose to leave before we ate the Thanksgiving meal.
    We were all very disappointed about all the work we put into having a wonderful Thanksgiving came to nothing. I was mad because we don't get to see Grandmother and Grandpa very often and it wasn't fair that God would do this to us. It's not fair that we spent all this time getting ready for them to be here, just to have them hurry out of the house because Janessa was sick. But that was wrong thinking, we cleaned, scrubbed, organized, and exhausted ourselves because we love them and we love mamma and we wanted to do what she wanted, even though some of the things we did might have seemed pointless. We all knew that God was leading us to Texas when we moved here and it was His plan to separate us from Grandpa and Grandmother for our own good. As much as we love them, we never would have had the blessings and joys we have had here if we hadn't moved.
       As we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, not very thankful at all, we all started talking about why God had caused all this to happen. We remembered the first Thanksgiving and how they had just gone through a year of disease, starvation, and suffering because they didn't want to follow a religion that they believed was false. They were without homes, some without families, most had lost someone they loved, and they had just found out that they were about to receive that entire tribe in Indians for a feast, which they didn't have. They weren't thankful just for the food that the Indians provided for the feast, but rather they were thankful for the hardships that had helped them build their faith. They were thankful for the fire that God had put them through so that He would see their gold.

   Now you can look at our story and feel sorry for us, but that's not why I put it up on the blog. The reason its there is so we can remember the sacrifice that generations before us have made, so that we can have luxurious holidays several times a year. So that we have the freedom to pick up a Bible off of the side table and read it whenever we want. So we have the privilege of owning our own land. We can leave the state we live in whenever we want with no questions asked, we have TVs where we can watch the football game. So we can have a day with our family doing what every we want without someone looking over our shoulder to see if we are doing it right. We have no limitations on how many kids you can have, you have the right to educate you kids any way you want, you can teach them your faith without the government putting you in prison. But if we aren't intentional for the next generations to come, we will lose these PRIVILEGES and so will they.
    Looking back on this hard week, I will always call it the best Thanksgiving in my life, because my loving God taught me what is truly worth being thankful about.

What are you thankful about?