Thoughts on Thanksgiving

About ten blog titles have been swirling around in my mind. What a week it has been!  We’ve had visiting houseguests from Arizona (Jeff’s brother, his wife, and their two kids–4 year-old and 18 month-old), we have THIRTY people (including kids) for Thanksgiving dinner, a hilariously chaotic dinner fiasco in Portland (waiting for permission to share), and I am thoroughly exhausted.  But it was glorious. Wonderful!  Some amazing God-ordained conversations, some reconciliation where brokenness reigned, some really treasured things.  But even though I was home the whole time, it wasn’t until I walked into church tonight, got the kids checked (it was a fiasco just to get there, another story), and walked down into the dimmed sanctuary, that my soul found rest. Ahhh…. home.

Home in the presence of God.  Oh certainly He was with us this whole week, and certainly we communed. But there is nothing for my dry soul like worshipping with God’s people. And strangely enough, I actually like sitting alone. I usually do sit alone because Jeff is working doing something or other, and I like to sit way up front because if I sit in the back I get distracted by people and by hearing myself sing (which is not pretty).  In the front I can’t get distracted and it’s so loud I can sing at the top of my lungs and only hear the beautiful voices of the vocalists up front. 🙂 It’s great.

Anyway, it felt great to be back at home in my church family. After a week of being host, it was delicious to sit and savor, to receive, to soak in God’s presence and sing with His people.

See the one thing that was very discouraging this week was–you guessed it–Dutch.  I love his dear little self but I am telling you this boy gives me fits.  This pooping thing is ridiculous, and day after day of him secretly pooping his pants in remote corners of the house then hiding and by the time I find it it’s smeared everywhere, day after day of nothing but WHINING about every single thing.  Of wishing that just ONCE we could do something without it being a battle, that a day could go by without -panking.  I know, I know–this too shall pass.  It just struck me especially this week because having two more kids in the house seemed to heighten every battle.  And then I felt like being unplugged for several days, to be with family, made me so far behind in women’s ministry things, I just felt overwhelmed.

So I arrived at church knowing that tears would probably spill.  Not because anything is bad, just because of how I need God’s wisdom and grace to love this little boy and to balance all the things we’re involved in, and to find the balance between ministry and family and…

So I’m realizing this is getting too long and I haven’t even gotten to the sermon from tonight which is what I wanted to share! 🙂  So I’ll write that tomorrow.  Tonight I’ll just share the things I learned from Thanksgiving break, ok?

1. For cool conversations to happen, you first just have to be there.  For a long time. And be willing to do nothing, for a long time.  And then, when you least expect it–cool conversations happen.

2. Everyone thinks not having a TV at Thanksgiving would be a disaster. It wasn’t.

3. Letting two toddlers go absolutely hog wild and make a disaster with a Monopoly game in the office so that you can eat an entire Thanksgiving dinner in peace and quiet is totally worth it.

4. No one can argue with being loved.

5. A little wine really does help…

6. Children’s books are amazing ways to share Christ.

7. Never. Ever. EVER blindly trust your google traffic report.  Just go out and check for yourself.

8. No matter how good the deal, shopping on black Friday is the still the most joyless thing on earth. (ok that’s just my opinion)

9. It takes 3 hours and 2 minutes to walk from the Portland Multnomah Club to the Portland airport.

10. Everyone has something to be thankful for.

Goodnight.