Thanksgiving is THANKS GIVING! By Karla
(Note from Linda: Karla shared the following message on the private site this morning and I greatly appreciate her permission to share it here as well, because it is such an important message for all of us; particularly those who will not spend the day with family as usual. So just remember that God is listening to what you are saying in the desert (Numbers 14) and He will DO what HE hears us saying! So let’s fill our hearts and mouths with praise and Thanksgiving and get ready to receive His richest blessings! Happy Thanks Giving and I pray that you will be blessed and encouraged today!)
Happy Thanksgiving FAMM Family!!
I have had so many things to be thankful for recently that I wasn’t sure what to post first. However, due to a number of conversations SNO (spouse name omitted) and I have had in the last few days, I chose to write about what I have learned this year about Thanksgiving.
Growing up, I had many wonderful memories of the holidays, and Thanksgiving was very important to me as a child. Along with Christmas, Thanksgiving Day was a normal and happy day in a not so normal and not that happy childhood. That being said, one can imagine the emphasis I have naturally placed on the holidays. A lot of us have that idyllic vision of how Thanksgiving should look; you know…the turkey, the pumpkin pie, the family all together…everybody is happy, even if it is for just one day.
Well, I have clung to that vision right into my adult life, which worked out well until this year because God had other ideas for me this Thanksgiving. He had a message for me, which was “Thanksgiving is a state of mind.” But to be honest, I didn’t care for that message at first because I was facing my first Thanksgiving without my father, who died earlier this year, and painfully aware of the fact that not only would I not be spending Thanksgiving with my father; I was not going to spend Thanksgiving with my husband this year either. Well, I was planning a pretty big pity party for myself…poor me…not only do I have to spend a holiday without my Dad, but without my husband too. The irony couldn’t be thicker.
God is good and let me tell you why. I am in New York visiting my Aunt (my father’s sister) with my Mom and the kids. SNO was asked to come by my son weeks ago, but he said no, and I had prayed that he would change his mind. Surely God would not want me to be without my Dad AND my husband for the first time on a HOLIDAY! But He did.
So I have had to go deep with God these last few days. Here I am celebrating the fact that my husband told me Monday night that HE LOVED ME for the first time in months…rejoicing that my husband told me that I am the best thing that ever happened to him and that he misses me…and praising God that my husband said that he will be home soon…yep, it’s official now!!! Yet, here I was getting dangerously close to not being truly thankful and grateful because I was so caught up in not being with my husband for Thanksgiving, a holiday that I had put so much emphasis on my whole life.
So God had to teach me a valuable lesson; I was so caught up in the family togetherness of Thanksgiving, that I thought that my Thanksgiving was somehow tainted; not right, bittersweet, borderline disappointing. But God got my attention, and He spoke right through my husband, who said that this will probably be the only holiday that we ever spend apart again and he said “We have a lot to celebrate.” But it didn’t sink in at first…that we ever spend apart again….a lot to celebrate.
Then it sunk in…REALLY sunk in. God is so faithful, He never fails us. He sent a powerful message to me through the man I love and cherish.
Thanksgiving is still Thanksgiving whether you are alone, with your family, with friends, etc. It is still Thanksgiving whether you have the traditional turkey dinner or a Big Mac from McDonald’s. God wants us to have Thanksgiving in our hearts. He wants Thanksgiving to be a state of mind! Don’t get me wrong; I was thankful, but I had missed it, and had been missing it for years. And God decided this was the year to teach me what Thanksgiving really is; it is not a traditional holiday for me to love, but a state of mind that I needed to embrace daily. That means that Thanksgiving should be in my heart and mind every single day, and not just one Thursday out of every year. Thank you, God!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am thankful for each and every one of you. I am thankful for the ministry, for Linda, and for the many marriage restorations and miracles we have seen, and for the ones to come! God Bless!