Celebrating Thanksgiving

Most of my subscribers are Canadians, so you likely were celebrating Thanksgiving yesterday as well. The Canadian Thanksgiving falls in about mid-October, while Americans celebrate their Thanksgiving Day in November.

But there are many ways to celebrate Thanksgiving. Do you ALWAYS celebrate it with a house full of people and a tremendous feast spread on the table?

On the other hand, if you are the chief Chef, and you find all that kitchen work utterly exhausting, you may be the one who persuades all the rest of the family or the whole clan that you want meet at a restaurant and celebrate with a meal that others have cooked and brought to the table.

During the years I cared for my parents, the Chef role fell to me mostly. Unless my sister Elsie was there too, and it was a given that she was a far better cook than I, since she had trained to be in charge of hospital kitchens, so she had no problem planning a menu for over 30 people at a time, and pulling it all off quite easily.

I had no problem serving as her flunky, running to fetch whatever she asked for, or clearing up after and doing the dishes alone . . . . quite often.

Then, when I moved into this tiny house all by myself, I thought and prayed about it, and decided, since I did know how to cook a turkey and all the vegetables and so forth, even a decent dessert I should be looking out for other seniors who lived alone and might thing it was too much bother to prepare a big thanksgiving meal just for one, and invited them over to join me and we could all pretend we were one happy family.

At least the 5-6 people I invited over would not have to warm up left-overs and eat a TV dinner in front of their TV - if they had one. (I didn't.) That has worked out quite nicely for the 17 years I've lived here now. But some of these friends are now bedridden in a nursing home; some have died, and I've grown tired if I work in the kitchen on my feet for more than an hour. In recent years I have made the effort for the sake of others.

However, this year I thought it through very carefully. I wasn't sure how many would come, and I would really rather have a prayer retreat with the LORD, (skip the big meal) and work on my to-do lists.

I have to-do lists for different parts of my life; business, client work, personal projects I'd like to do, and so on. Lately, I'd begun to feel crowded and really wanted to talk over my lists with the Lord, and see if He would make suggestions to tidy up my lists and make them more manageable.

So I did not invite anyone to come for Thanksgiving supper yesterday. I had some chicken breasts and put two of them into the crockpot with some potatoes and other veggies, so that if someone just showed up at my door, I could invite that one in, and share my supper with that person.

But mainly I would just have my feet up, my lists in hand, and ask some questions - and listen for answers.

I had my usual morning prayer time but found my mind running off in little tangents, so it took longer than I'd thought. I had a muffin for brunch, and then got myself comfortable in the recliner - (probably not the best idea as I got sleepy there). After a while I realized that I'd make better progress at the computer, asking questions, and really thinking things through.

Sure enough by supper time I had revised my lists, and moved some things to a different list, and made up a new list of the priority some of these things should have, and I began to see that it was all "doable" after all.

My chicken and baked potato tasted great, and after doing dishes I got to work on completing the end-of- summer Garden Photo Tour, something I had not been able to get for several weeks.

Hopefully that will be ready to mail out next week.

[Back to Archives Index ] ~~ [Back to Main RoseBouquet Page]