It’s Thanksgiving weekend. And while many are gathered with their families around tables loaded with baked turkeys, stuffing, and pies, I stood in my little green kitchen baking carrot muffins and cried.
When I was thirteen my parents deviated from celebrating any traditional holidays. So the days when most people gathered around family tables and special memories were just normal, everyday days for us. No more special memories were created. Instead, they were often filled with hard work.
And now that I attend a church that celebrates all these holidays, I spend these holidays walking through them with a deep ache in my heart. I have no family dinner to go to. No baked turkey. No pumpkin pie. And today the closest I might get to Thanksgiving are the carrot muffins I baked alone in my kitchen.
I am not writing this today to look for pity. I am writing this because perhaps there are others who feel an ache on these festive holidays as well.
Perhaps you have lost a loved one and you miss their presence at your table. Perhaps your loved one is ill, and this may be your last Thanksgiving with them. Maybe you too left behind your home and family for your personal healing, and you too are spending these days at home alone.
I have been told that it is important to create new memories.
Memories that will once again fill us with joy in these seasons instead of the pain we’re feeling.
Yet how do we do that? Especially if we are living alone and our family doesn't celebrate these holidays.
I don’t know. Perhaps I can begin by recounting all the things I am thankful for in this season.
I am deeply thankful for Darrell and Elaine Kehler who have so kindly given me the most beautiful little living space to call my home.
I am thankful for my vehicle, even though it has cost me a fortune on repairs, because I can still travel to all the places I need to go.
I am thankful I get to attend college and work towards my dreams in early childcare. And I'm thankful for the program that is sponsoring my studies.
I am deeply grateful for the healing and redemption God has done in my life in the past five years. I am thankful I am still alive after years of struggling with suicidal depression.
Is it right to say that I am thankful for my current emotional and spiritual wilderness because I can sense that God is taking me to new levels of healing and an even deeper relationship and trust in Him?
And I am thankful for my new therapist who is walking with me to deeper levels of understanding and freedom.
Yes, I understand that recounting all our blessings doesn’t erase our pain. But today it encourages me to see that God is faithful now as He has been before. I am not alone.
And friends, you are not alone either.
I see you. I understand.
But most of all I want you to know this:
God is with us! His name is Emmanuel.
In every season. In each heartache. He finds us where we are and He stays.
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