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November 22, 2023
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, we will break a 20-year-long tradition. Established many years ago, our family’s particular custom of giving thanks holds the sweetest of places in my holiday memories.
Since our children were very young, after turkey and mashed potatoes but before, always before the pies were set out, markers, pens, and colored pencils were scattered across a cleared dining table. Annually on this holiday, people we treasure were seated around our fully stretched Amish-crafted table, a generous offering from my parents-in-law near the beginning of our marriage. We offered family and guests a hardcover children’s book upon which to place their blank paper.
Instrumental background music was turned low and within minutes loved ones began to overflow pages with artistic and linguistic expressions put to paper of people, places, and things that elicit thanks. Creative and often lengthy lists were compiled containing what each person was individually thankful or glad for from the previous year. I delight in this tradition.
One of my earthly treasures is a three-ring binder stuffed with colorful thankful sheets created by my loved ones that I’ve collected and saved each year. Over two decades we’ve done this precious activity with our children and guests. But not this year.
This bitter-sweet suspension of a celebration I hold dear feels somehow…necessary. Yes, this year, my soul particularly senses the need for this adjustment. I hope to resume our beloved tradition, but for tomorrow, we are taking a purposeful pause. A pivot. Because it’s that important to seek to reorient our giving of thanks.
Sixty years ago today, on November 22, 1963, C.S. Lewis died. I suppose I might “blame” Lewis for the conviction that has fallen over me and the reason for my much contemplated and internally debated halt in our thanks-journalling tradition for this year. I’m challenged by Lewis, by the Lord, to consider that there is a “better way” to give thanks. On this eve of Thanksgiving, Lewis’ 60th passing-to-glory anniversary, it seems fitting and proper to share one of my favorite quotes of his that this year is shifting my paradigm on giving thanks.
C.S. Lewis wrote,
Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility… I have tried to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different… Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun… If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.
Heart check: If we are primarily attentive to the things we’ve been given rather than beholding the Giver of the gifts, we may be drifting. If God isn’t the One to whom all thanks is directed, we may subtly be moving away from godly gratitude and toward a self-focused kind of gratitude.
The Lord has made me glad, thankful, and grateful, or “GRATEFL,” as my license plate says. This year, I feel an inner heaviness over the need to steward my thanks and help those seated around our table to do the same. My husband and I agree. After potatoes and before pie tomorrow, we’ll pass on the colored pencils and markers but rather share devotionally and pray about all of this. I might be overthinking. I may even regret this decision. But if nothing else, I hope this year of pause is a reorienting for my heart and those around our table. Maybe yours, too.
The question that we’ve asked for 20 years, “What are you thankful for?” is a good question. But not good enough. I propose a better question, “What has the One who has been so kind to you this year, done for you or given to you?”
May your Thanksgiving Day and, indeed, every day be full of giving thanks to God. May the Lord supply our minds with much grace to do the worthy work of “running back up the sunbeam to the sun” to behold and worship the Giver of all good things.
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen!” Romans 11:36
(photo credit: Staci McWilliams, Unsplash)