When the thankfulness takes thought

Yesterday I was feeling anything but thankful.

Lonely. Stressed. Overwhelmed. Ungrateful. Bitter.

Yeah, that’s more what my day before Thanksgiving was like. The list-making, the shopping, my daughter home from school giving us an extra six hours of potential fighting with her brother. I wanted to be thankful. But wanting it wasn’t making it happen.

Earlier in the week I’d realized this is our sixth Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania. The sixth year we’ve been absent from our family celebration in Illinois. It was coupled with the realization that Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. Phil and I love the food and family, the togetherness in playing board games, laughing, sharing stories of years gone by. On Thanksgiving there’s no pressure to bring anything except yourself (and maybe your signature dish). No gifts. No pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I like Christmas. In theory. Maybe those are thoughts for another day.

So, there I was missing my family, not looking forward to the food prep ahead of me, feeling bad for feeling unthankful.

—

My hands were covered in flour, sticky and dough-covered as I formed and shaped the rolls. Our daughter stood next to me, her hands matching mine, doing her best to make round balls of dough that would later become dinner rolls. Our son was crumbling cornbread into a bowl, readying it for the cornbread dressing to be baked the next day.

And I realized something else.

In the six years we’ve been in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, I’ve learned a lot of things I might not have learned.

Making homemade rolls, for one. It’s taken me years to decipher the traditional recipe from my husband’s side of the family, and I still don’t get it right all the time. But I can make rolls from scratch using flour and yeast and everything, and they taste like dinner rolls, even if they look like blobs instead of clovers.

For this, I am thankful.

And cooking a turkey. I was terrified the first year, sure I would screw it up. But for five consecutive years I’ve brined and cleaned and oiled and roasted a turkey. (This year, we opted for a pork chop Thanksgiving.) And I learned that I actually like turkey.

For this, I am thankful.

I make pie crusts from scratch. We have our own food traditions now.

For this, I am thankful.

Over these years we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving with select members of our family, with other people’s families, with just the four of us. One year, we celebrated in anticipation of the arrival of the fourth member of our family.

And I’ve learned that sometimes family is geographic, rather than genetic. As much as we love our blood relatives, we’ve found friends who are as much like family here in Pennsylvania.

For this, I am thankful.

And I’ve learned to be thankful even when my husband had to work on Thanksgiving because at least he had a job.

This year, we’re glad to have him home for the day.

As we cooked up kukelas (pronounced like koo-kah-luhs), the German fried and sugared dough of my husband’s family’s heritage, and ate our fill of sugary goodness, the thankfulness hit me again. I’m thankful for this family, this house, this season of life, not because I think we deserve it or even because we have so much, but because we know what it is to not have, to nearly lose what’s most important, to take for granted.

For this, I am thankful. 

Not only for the blessings of God but for His mercy. For the grace of others. For love that covers a multitude of sins.

In everything, give thanks.