I love the Thanksgiving season at our farm. I'm not sure how many folks we'll have this year, but my gates are open. I'm already celebrating and giving thanks to God for these warm daytime temperatures and the golden sun rays stretching across the frosty fields these past mornings. Each blade of grass dances and sparkles in its radiant glow as the dogs and I work our way through its lovely, shimmering performance.
Oh, we're a family like most families, very diverse. It's not all warm and cozy.
In fact if you decide to stop in, you're liable to see several deer carcasses swinging in the chilly air, maybe a sheep or a broad-breasted turkey. You may possibly be volunteered into the meat processing assembly line where you could be asked to hold something gross.
Your opinion could be called upon, not in the political forum, but to taste test a spoonful of an unidentified, hopefully edible, more than likely spicy, object.
All of this down home goodness is wrapped up in some interesting conversation.
Upon leaving, your clothing will be covered in enough Great Pyrenees fur to spin and knit a pair of mittens and a scarf.
You've been warned.
My handsome farmer will be decked out like Elmer Fudd in his hunting coat and cap. I will gently encourage him to surrender his weapon and change for the main meal. When he grumbles, I'll implore his mother.
My farm, my rules. And sometimes Grandma Ida helps me enforce those rules.
At lunch time on Thursday, before Poppy says grace, before everyone grabs a plate and the cousins take to the porch, I have a tradition.
All friends, family, and hunters, no exceptions. We circle around for a time of sharing. I don't rush this. We have a microwave. No politics are allowed in the circle. My rules.
Everyone gets a turn to speak, to share a story, a thought, or a testimony. Some share a joke or a memory or a word of encouragement.
It's joy and pain entwined.
Some are missing.
I always end up crying.
My mom used to make these delectable yeast rolls for our holiday feasts. They were her Maw Maw's recipe. After Mom died in 2014, I dug through countless recipe books, cabinets, and file boxes in a deranged state looking for that recipe to no avail. It was committed to her memory, no doubt.
Like every great cook, it wasn't the ingredients anyway. It was how she brought them all together.
Once I stopped by her house to visit and she was using that same dough recipe to make cinnamon buns for her grandbabies.
"I know you've reserved a couple of those for me," I said.
She told me that she had just read an article stating the many health benefits of cinnamon.
And that was all the justification I needed. "Perfect, put on a pot of coffee."
I miss her terribly.
I wish she could have lived long enough to see me become a grandmother. She's one heck of a tough act to follow, but I think she'd be pleased, even as I buy Cinnabon rolls in the freezer section at Sam's Club.
Each morning as I work through farm chores, I pray, "Lord, give me this day my daily bread." It's a hard prayer to pray, but after many years I've learned to say: "Give me what I need, not what I want."
"Give me what will make me like you."
My daily bread.
My heart longs for Mom's cinnamon buns, but I'm usually served up whole wheat or sprouted grain instead.
I want gooey sweetness, but God knows my soul will only grow healthy with nutritious, daily doses of humility and repentance and the spiritual disciplines. The Bread of Life.
And so I trust and allow him to open my eyes, to see my faults, to see where I have been so wrong. To see that until I've stepped inside and worn another's skin, I simply have no idea of what they have traveled through or fought against.
To see that being a Christian means I am a human before I am anything else.
This morning's reading and meditation reminds me:
"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up.... Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." Ephesians 5
As God in Christ forgave me.
My Thanksgiving prayer as we converge in the next few days is that God's presence will flow into our gatherings and melt our frozen mind sets and heal our hurting hearts at the very thought of his love and grace reaching out across us.
The emphasis should never be on the differences we harbor that threaten to drive us apart, but instead on the richness of how God blends the brokenness together and makes us whole.
With an extra pinch of cinnamon, of course. 💛
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone! 🍗
