This week we’ll be preparing for Thanksgiving. Some folks will travel great distances; others will drive just down the road to share that meal with family and friends. I’ve made my first trip to the grocery store to purchase the main items, but for sure there’ll be a couple more for those things that were forgotten. In the midst of getting ready, the careful timing of each dish for the meal to come together on Thursday, I want to be intentional in focusing on the “Thanks” underneath this holiday. In so many ways, it feels like our culture moves from Halloween to Christmas; we quickly swap out the bold orange and black, overlook the remaining remnants of fall’s subtle hues, and skip to the more vibrant green and red.

Yesterday, I took a long hike at the city park and found fir trees with new tones of rust-gold that I hadn’t noticed on previous walks. When I started looking up resources on Gratitude–thinking about this post, I found this quote in a collection on a gallery wall in this Oprah publication. https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/health/g40680746/gratitude-quotes/

I could easily have just walked passed that tree, but its color and texture caught my eye. It wasn’t one of the maples that have such vivid fall color. I’ve had this same feeling when looking at my patio garden. The morning glories persist and now their foliage has turned a brownish-yellow. While previously I would have seen it as dying, today I thought about how the golden leaves are a nice background color for the blue flowers. That’s a small thing, but yet in that moment, it brought delight. It also was a way of ‘reframing’ this ending phase of the plant as having its own beauty.

Another quote on that gallery wall that caught my attention:

I thought of how I go into stores and feel overwhelmed by all the choices. It often happens that when I’m in the grocery there’s so much on the shelves that I can’t see that one item I’m looking for; that’s one reason it’s so calming to be in nature. I’m able to enjoy the free gift of creation without having to decide on what to purchase, without the feeling of needing more.

One of the Bible verses that gets at this vigilance we must maintain in order to see the gifts that surround us is in Colossians:

I remember years ago when I went through chemotherapy, I was not at a grateful point in my life. All I could see was the misery of going through treatment. One day, when I was lying across my bed, thumbing through the Psalms, looking for some hope, I came upon Psalm 86 asking for God to give the psalmist a “sign of your goodness.” That was when I became aware that we have to be vigilant to see those signs. Sometimes they come in subtle forms, in observations that could be missed if we hurry forward, lost in our world of thoughts, of specific expectations. Once I started seeing those things in my path, provided like manna to meet my need that day, I had a more grateful heart; that led to a greater feeling of well-being and calm.

My hope for this week as we prepare for Thanksgiving, is that we’ll prepare ourselves by opening our eyes to all that we’re grateful for–the small, as well, as the large things. Maybe we’ll see some new positive development in a relationship with a family member; maybe we’ll see a way that a disappointment turned out to be the right thing for our life; maybe we’ll see that a new limitation has opened us up to a greater freedom to explore a new area.

Blessing to you as you make new discoveries in gratitude.

Connie