Photo by Анастасия Триббиани
This Thanksgiving American Dairy Association commercial was aired in 1956, four years before I was born —the perfect house with the ideal kitchen. Mom and Dad are dressed like they are going out, but they’re just working in the kitchen. Their daughter is innocent and well-behaved. They’re the ideal white suburban family. The romanticized memories of this era still carry on and shape our expectations of the holiday season today.
Thanksgiving heralds the start of the holiday season, and we’re encouraged to give thanks for how we have been blessed during the year. It’s great to prepare and cook with lots of butter, eat until the buttons on our clothes give way, and then digest as we nap on a comfortable couch or chair.
There is nothing like these traditions to make us feel warm and fuzzy in life. It was that way for the first twelve years of my life. But then, I lost my mother to cancer on December 6, 1972. Now, Thanksgiving reminds me that the anniversary of her death is coming soon.
The holidays stopped being joyful to me without my mother, and for decades, this annual reminder made me depressed. Little did I know that my rescue started as soon as I stepped through the doors of Morgan Valley Christian Church for the first time.
That church family became my adopted family. They watched me as I spiritually matured for over twenty-five years within its walls and supported me when God led me to my calling and the pulpit. We closed the church at the end of October 2022, and I am reminded this year how much I miss our church family and my mother.
I’m thankful for that adopted family who became the key ingredients to the recipe that made me who I am today. Everyone contributed one seasoning or another through our shared experiences over the years. I am thankful for all our time together, building memories.
Colossians 3:15
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.
Last Thanksgiving, I was still numb and mourning after our final service together. I was recovering from the exhaustion of shepherding the congregation through closing something we all loved deeply. It’s a year later, and we still miss our church family. Every year, we will miss them during the holidays. But we are thankful for the time we had together and the memories we carry with us always.
Psalm 28:7
The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
In the early 1900s, a policeman was walking his beat in Chicago when he observed a man standing before a little mission. He had removed his hat, and the officer thought he was acting rather strangely. Thinking the man might be drunk or ill, the policeman approached him.
He noticed his eyes were closed, so he nudged him and said, "What's the matter, Mac? Are you sick?" The man looked up and smiled. "No, sir. My name is Billy Sunday. I was converted right here on this mission. I never pass this way without taking the opportunity, if possible, to stand quietly for a moment and whisper a prayer of thanksgiving."
All credit goes to God for maturing me into the man I am today. My life would have been different if God had not led me to Morgan Valley Christian Church. I walked in with a lot of scars I didn’t know how to deal with. I was utterly skeptical that a church community was what I needed. God had let me down, and life had been a struggle. I remember telling the pastor to her face, “I’m not one of those Jesus freaks.”
But like an arctic glacier melting slowly over many years, my Grinch heart transitioned from stone to flesh. The seeds that God had planted within my heart sprouted. Once they did, there was no going back to who I was.
“God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.”
― John Henry Jowett
Thanksgiving isn’t always a happy time for people as it marks the start of the holiday pressures. Pain is a part of life, and the festive lights, services, and Bailey’s Irish Cream cannot make it go away. If you are feeling pain this holiday season, know it doesn’t have the last word.
If God can take my pain and turn it into a benefit that comforts others, then God can do the same with you. Paul faced persecution for his commitment to preach the Good News about Jesus regardless of the consequences. Paul wrote to the Corinthians about relying on the comfort only God gives:
2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
Paul and the other followers of Jesus didn’t find out that God was enough until God was all they had left. It was then that they knew God was all they needed. Whatever you are struggling with this holiday season, invite God to walk the healing journey with you.
The song, Scars, by I AM THEY invites us to turn the page in our story. Whatever our story is today is already written. There isn’t much we can do to change that. But we can choose to turn to the next blank page. We can choose to write a new story from this point forward. We can be thankful for the gift of grace that allows us to do that.
Whatever pain is in your path this holiday season, I pray that you’ll choose to turn the page, welcome a new relationship with God in your life, and persevere in walking the path to healing, one step at a time, and giving thanks with each step.
Let God choose the timeline of your healing. It has taken years for me, and there was nothing I could do to force it. I had to learn to trust. I’m asking you to do the same. God can use your pain to teach you to trust, to show you how to help others, and to draw you closer to other believers.
Waking up to a new sunrise
Looking back from the other side
I can see now with open eyes
Darkest water and deepest pain
I wouldn’t trade it for anything
Cause my brokenness brought me to You
And these wounds are a story You’ll use
So I’m thankful for the scars
Cause’ without them I wouldn’t know Your heart
And I know they’ll always tell of who You are
So forever I am thankful for the scars
Now I’m standing in confidence
With the strength of Your faithfulness
And I’m not who I was before
No, I don't have to fear anymore