Being a Thankful Person

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I like the holiday. It comes with no pressure or expectation. I wake up in the morning and think, "Ahhhh, it's Thanksgiving! I am going to enjoy family, food, some football, play some cards or board games, laugh a lot and then look forward to another day off tomorrow!!!"

For me, Thanksgiving brings back tons of memories. I know everyone has different traditions. I learned of a family recently that goes paintballing on Thanksgiving and enjoys the loving tradition of blasting the daylights out of each other! I like it!! Hey, they are thankful they HAVE family they can nuke!! Come to think of it.....nah....

My Thanksgiving traditions are not so dramatic but it's just not the holiday without my mom's cream of mushroom soup green beans with onion rings. I still am tempted to put the black olives on the end of each finger and eat them off. And by all means don't forget the rolls. No rolls, no holiday! After dinner, do some dishes and start a water fight and then a little "cheat and argue". "Cheat and Argue" that's the nick name for a card game my brother in law refuses to play. Hey, some people shoot each other, we cheat and argue. It's THANKSGIVING!!

I've heard people say that we ought to be thankful EVERY day and maybe just set aside one day for complaining. What a day that would be! One day when you can get together with family and friends for the express purpose of griping about anything you want to! You can bash the price of gas, the lame football teams in the bay area, home prices, global warming, gripe about whatever you want and do it with a frown. You can! It's your holiday!! I have a feeling though, that if you really were thankful for 364 days of the year, you'd never celebrate "Whinersday" or whatever you'd want to call it!

That really is my point. If you are a person who gives thanks constantly it's not because every thing is going so great that you have a daily supply of wonderful events to be thankful for. That's not life. When life happens it's usually a pretty good mix if good and lousy. The person who gives thanks often, does so because he/she is a thankful person. It's that simple. Thankful people give thanks a lot. Thankful people are less angry, less stressed, less whiney and they smile a lot more! As a matter of fact, thankful people have more "good days" than unthankful people because they feel thankful for things that unthankful people don't recognize. A thankful person may have unfortunate things happen all day but will focus on the one thing that is worth thanks. Better yet, a thankful person seems to be able to find a reason to give thanks even when there is no redeeming quality to a situation.

I remember watching the movie, "The Hiding Place." It's about a Christian family in WWII Holland that prepared a secret room in their home to hide Jewish people during the holocaust. They ultimately got caught, the father and other family members were killed and the two sisters were sent to the concentration camps. The girls, Corrie and Betsy, were malnourished, beaten, abused and put to hard labor. Yet they held to their faith. They began to share Jesus in small Bible studies in the barracks but the guards would stop them and threaten them if they continued. However, the conditions got worse and worse. A horrible lice infestation broke out which at first discouraged them all. However, they discovered that because of the lice, the guards would no longer enter the barracks thus allowing the girls to have their Bible study. They learned to give thanks for even the lice!!

Thankful people can always find good in something somewhere. A lot of situations look hopeless but if we take time to look and be thankful we'll find it's not as bad we once thought. People who give thanks will have good days and bad days because life is sometimes rosy and sometimes full of problems. Thankful people seem to have rosy days more often than everyone else. Why? They are thankful even for the lice! You can take the thankful quality out of a situation but you can't take the thanks out of a person. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says. "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. "

Now pass the stuffing, the gravy, some olives and don't forget the rolls!!