Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving, 2014, was a glorious day to be thankful for all the blessings and abundance, the joy and happiness, we've been given, up to the present moment, throughout the year, and over the course of our entire lives.

Thanksgiving should be anything but just another holiday opportunity to stuff yourself. Like Christmas, it should be a time to remember what Jesus did for us by dying on the cross so that we might live, for the grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit showered upon us. For those reasons, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.

In my home, Thanksgiving has taken on an even more important function beyond giving thanks. Yes, my scars from abuse and neglect run the deepest, but through the Holy Spirit I had help healing. Now, I'm burdened to help my siblings heal. Even after all these years, they are still suffering. They've never been taught how to love.

This year two of my siblings joined my Thanksgiving dinner. I opened with a prayer.

"Father in heaven, Happy Thanksgiving! We thank you for having your Son die on the cross for our sins so that we might have life. We thank you for all the blessing you've given us throughout the year and look forward to abundant blessing for the upcoming year. We thank you for the food we are about to receive and we pray that it brings us health, nutrition, and well-being. In Jesus' name, Amen."

My youngest sibling knocked on our door first. Much more important than the turkey centered on the table, hugs and simple words of affection are passed around as servings of spiritual nutrition. My siblings have difficulty showing or expressing affection, but I've been working on that. Today I heard one say, "I love you."

It was important because they'd never told that to anyone before. It's a sign of their respect for me, something that given our past I greatly appreciate. I'm still healing from those terrible early years and hearing "I love you" erases some of my childhood scars. Along with the capacity to love, I hope they will come the faith to accept God and with God will come help with the depression, anger, and drug use problems that have plagued my siblings' lives.

I know their pain runs deep, their frustrations constant, so I pray every day for God to help them. For some reason, our mother's passing some years ago seems to have been a milestone making things even more difficult for them. Like my mother, they don't push everyone away, believing they can't be loved and it surfaces as meanness, cynicism, and sarcasm. There is good in all of them and my assignment, my mission, is to bring out the good in them and help it grow with the right spiritual nutrition.

Our family Thanksgiving gathering ended, I walked one of them out to their car, gave them a big hug, told them, "I love you," and to my surprise, they jumped up, kicked their heels together, and returned a hearty "I love you" back at me!

At precious moments like that I know God is working through me to slowly dismiss the demons that have been slashing at their souls.