Yes, I know thanksgiving should be a lifestyle. I've been giving thanks on FB throughout November in various situations and for various things God is doing or has blessed us with, and I know there are some people who downplay doing that because we should be thankful all of the time. I agree; we should be living in gratitude each and every day of our lives. But at the same time, it's not wrong to have a time to remember and to really focus on giving thanks otherwise we shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving Day.
I've really enjoyed the discipline of posting something every day. I didn't do it so I could seem more spiritual than someone who wasn't doing it; I really started it because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It always seemed less commercial than a lot of the other holidays, and it seemed easier to focus on the real meaning of the holiday. Christmas is great, but I get annoyed at how easy it is for me to get caught up in so many things that have nothing to do with the real meaning of Christmas. If you think you aren't subject to this as well, just try naming all of the Christmas songs you go around humming and see how many of them have anything to do with Christ's birth. I'm not saying we shouldn't have fun, but Christmas just seems easier to turn into a month long to do list with having to check so many items off of the list than just focusing on Jesus.
I heard a great program on Break Point about the real meaning and origin of Thanksgiving. It's exciting to me to hear someone talk about the true history as both a testament to the faith of the early settlers and to how God has indeed blessed America. When so many people try to downplay Thanksgiving and say we shouldn't celebrate it because of the awful things the white man did to Native Americans, it's important for us to tell the truth about the history. If we don't have days set aside to give God thanks and to remember what God has done for our country, we will certainly be in bad shape. I think we can already see the effects of it today.
Back to chronicling my thankfulness on FB--it taught me to re-analyze how I react to certain things. The first instance came earlier in the month as I was kind of upset because I had to make a lot of corrections on one of my thesis chapters. I was really stressed out about it when suddenly I was reminded through a sermon that I need to be thankful in every situation. And then it hit me--I could be thankful that I had the opportunity to rewrite and make the corrections before I stood in front of the committee to defend my thesis. It would have been horrible to have that many mistakes and not pass at the end.
On this past Saturday night, the electricity went out while we were at the church's Thanksgiving celebration. When we got home, ours was still out. I'm a person who likes to shower before bed in fact I HATE going to bed without a shower. Before Rusty started snoring I actually whined that I just wanted a shower before bed and to be able to run the fan. I even stayed up extra late hoping the electricity would come back on since it doesn't stay off for that long these days. It stayed off all night! When I realized it wasn't going to come on, I went to bed thinking I would wake up when it came back on, and I would get my shower then. I still had a bad attitude.
It stayed off all night, but by the time I awoke Sunday morning I had a better attitude. I decided I was thankful that even though we couldn't pump water into the house since it's an electric pump, I was thankful we could still get water outside. Rusty helped me bring in water from the outside, and I had an invigorating splash shower in the downstairs bathroom. The electricity came back on about halfway through my shower, but I was already recovered from my bad attitude by then and just finished with the cold shower.
Of course after all of that I realized that if my attitude had been better the night before I could have had the shower on Saturday night and slept better. But I learned my lesson a bit late, but at least I still learned about being thankful in every situation. God always gives us some way to be thankful, but sometimes we choose to turn a blind eye to it.
I pray that I will not forget the importance of being thankful every day. If I start to I may have to challenge myself again to do another 30 days at some other point during the year.
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