It's like the starting gun went off and I was still busy getting my shoes on. Preparations for Thanksgiving always seems to begin before my brain is ready. Maybe I am too busy. That is undoubtedly so, but I don't think that is all of the reason. Part of it is, I am not really ready to give up on summer.
Now I realize that much of the country is blanketed with snow. But, we are not. This is the South, and I moved here as a refugee from the northern climate over a decade ago. I am just now getting through the defrost cycle.
Interestingly, when we lived in the north country this was not an issue for me. Thanksgiving came about the same time in my mental calendar as it did on the calendar hanging on the wall. Probably because after sixteen consecutive months of snow, I was ready for a break. (Okay, sixteen months may be a slight exaggeration.) Anyway, as it turns out, I still prefer to deal with the rush to preparation for Thanksgiving rather than the long season of cold and snow.
The good news in all this is, that other than the food and traveling, Thanksgiving preparations are really easy. In fact, we should all be in a constant mind set of thanksgiving. That makes the Thanksgiving celebration exactly that: A Celebration of Gratitude. It becomes a time to pause and look back over the past year and count our blessings.
I suspect that none of us do enough of that.
So I invite you to join me in a pause from our busy lives to recount the joys, the blessings, and even the rough times from this past year. All of those experiences have brought you to this point.
I wish you a happy Thanksgiving celebration and a good rest this week.
