November is a time of great gratitude, where the world turns its hearts to charity, thanksgiving, abundance and grace. Over the years, it has become traditional for more than a few friends to gather at our home for roasted turkey and warm pumpkin pie, strong coffee and sweet fellowship , and our traditional gratitude meeting,where each of us shares what we feel grateful for, each year.

    

I always read from one of my favorite books, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life, by a down-to-earth Houston preacher, Chuck Swindall, who writes about reverence, renewal, reflection and rest. His piece on Thanksgiving, that I read every year at this heartfelt annual gathering, is beautiful, speaking to God’s faithfulness, mercy, abundance, protection and favor during our time of nostalgia and quiet reflection, as we humbly realize how much we have to be grateful for. 

     This year, it is even more important to find gratitude, when facing great powerlessness in my life. Someone I love has fallen ill, and while it is not terminal, it will take a while, perhaps a long while, for things to normalize. I don’t know the timetable, can’t change it, and this adversity has knocked me to my knees.

     Friends want to help, and do, but they can’t take away the worry or the fear. I am navigating new waters in the storm of life, and finding that adversity is a masterful teacher. It’s sink or swim, now, spiritually speaking, and I can either let self-pity drown me, or I can embrace the reality that sometimes, perhaps,  change deepens us.

 

Can I find God’s purpose in this? 

 

   Yes, because the question is never what I will do, it’s what God can do. Either God is all powerful or he is not. 

     Do I wish I knew when the love of my life will be well, fully himself again? Of course. But if I could know it all now, I would never need God. And I was told, the future is none of my business. That was so easy to say. So incredibly hard to carry out. 

     Yet, it is with quiet confidence,  that I stay in the day, greeting each morning with new expectation, make my gratitude list at night with an old fashioned fountain pen, and bow my head to silently pray in the morning. So far, this habits have been my mainstay, and I search out any opportunity I can to continue to see God’s greater purpose. A smile here, a favor there, a conversation with someone who needs guidance, spending time with my son and grandson. Assuring my husband, that all is well, and knowing, truly, that it really is.

    I sit in my small home now, after journaling my thoughts, and look  back on past Thanksgiving gatherings. Though  I have read about gratitude year after year, I realize how we have made it through so many things over the decades:  the Twin Towers, Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, the death of one son, a long absence of another, and the after effects of the recent pandemic, to name a few. 

   Perhaps it is by God’s grace  that we don’t know ahead of time that circumstances will change. I would have been able to prepare, had I known! we say. Yet, we are already prepared, in our hearts, we know we have always had what we needed, it is inside us. God has set eternity in the hearts of man. 

Do we live in times of uncertainty? Yes. Have things changed for me today. Yes,

Has God changed? No.I have all I need today. I remain grateful for unrealized gifts, for the continual humility in powerlessness and acceptance, and for your prayers and I will continue to simply surrender all.