Giving Thanks.....

Thanksgiving 2011 is here and hard work and love has gone in to getting ready to host our first Thanksgiving and really our first holiday. This year we will not make the usual trip to visit the family due to the new addition to our family. A new son and a awesome blessing from God has grounded us for a short time until he is ready to roll. Staying home, we connected with some close friends/family from here and have worked out what looks to be a great time. This year, after many years of watching I am gearing up to fry a turkey with my new "frying toys" purchased recently. I am looking forward to tasting it and praying desperately it turns out since I don't have a back up plan!! (pray with me please!!)

As I sit here baking a pumpkin pie......FROM SCRATCH!! and putting the seasoning on the turkey, I started thinking about where my life has brought me to and how in the midst of all the hustling and chaos of the holiday season, it has finally hit me that it is not longer about the food, no longer about the gifts coming on Christmas, no longer about what I am getting or all the "stuff" that goes along with the season but it is all about my family. As a child, I can remember thinking to myself that I had no idea what adulthood would bring and was often scared about growing up and nervous to the point I never thought marriage would happen. Mostly, I never thought love could be so amazing. At 36, not only am I married to the most amazing woman I have ever known and who is truly my greatest and best friend. I father 4 of the most unbelievable, outstanding, and loving kids I have ever heard of. I have seen what God's intent behind each of them has been and continues to be and am humbled that God trusted me even as a child to prepare me for this moment. In addition to that, I am honored by the friendships I have been blessed with over the years and the family I have fell in love with who I can always count on. God has truly blessed me and to even say that limits what HE has really done.

Often in life we can get so tied up in the daily routines and become disconnected from the things that life is really about. We become distracted by work, various activities, money, bills, houses, cars, t.v., and so many other things that we lose sight of what God started when HE first created us...family. We all face hard times, pain, tears, losing loved ones, set backs, failures, and a list of things that can pull us down but if your focus is family, those hard times seem a little easier because you're not alone. The tears get dried up by someone next to you who supports you. Your failures become fuel to push harder and achieve greater because of what you are really working for....family. I have already worked in some type of job for over 25 years and I have learned that I can give my job 100% and still be present for my family...every day! God made it clear to me in the beginning that my roll in my family would be a standard I have not seen and require me to sacrifice a great deal. Since then, I can remember that even in a season of great hardships, I was never alone because of my children who lifted me when they didn't even know. I have seen families lose sight of this value and end up divorced and hating one another in a painful way. I have watched children suffer because of the selfishness we often put on display as if it is always just about us. God created family and made it clear that family was very important to Him. In family, selfishness can not live in us because family means you are responsible for watching out for someone else. Family means that there is more than just you, more than just your needs. If we all watch out for the next person in our family you can be confident that someone is watching out for you.

This Thanksgiving, as you sit around the table and break bread with your families, look around at them and remember who they are to you. At times you may have not seen eye to eye and may have been upset with one another but that is still family and in the end, it is family that brings out God's love for us. When Thanksgiving is over and before you get back to the busy life we all live, make a vow to place "family" back in the front of all your "to-do's" and love them like you never have before. If God has allowed you the reward of family and the gift of being a spouse and parent, it is because HE trusted you even as a child, so make sure you be all that you said you would be growing up to the ones HE has placed before you to love and who love you back. THAT is reason enough to give thanks! Be Blessed.