Giving Thanks

11/22/12

“Its not about us, its about them”.  And so our church opens up on Thanksgiving to serve turkey dinner to the community.  Three seatings, hundreds of people.  Those without family nearby or without funds, without hope, maybe just without plans.  And this year we decided to celebrate our own family Thanksgiving on Friday, so that sister and family could share the day with both sets of parents and siblings.  So Rob decided to volunteer for Thursday at the church.  He’s done it before, and I stay home with the kids, prepare the food.  But this time they don’t need him to run sound or direct traffic, they need table hosts—people to sit and invest, look into eyes and smile.  So he asks me to do it with him, because “It wouldn’t feel right to do that without you.” So I say yes and we go to the sign up table.  But the third shift is desperately low on volunteers, so we are assigned one table each. 

And tonight at the training meeting I learn that the need was still great, so 18 of us are actually assigned 2 tables each.  I’m not sure how that works, but I imagine the homeschooling mother of 4 boys can manage for 90 minutes to figure something out.  So why does this feel like such a mountain to climb?

One month ago we spent a day being carried by the prayers and kind words of so many loved ones as we walked the Flight Museum, remembering the heavenly birthday of a little boy we miss so much.  It was hard and sad, but we were held and blessed and we made it through another October 24^th.  But this year Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving for us.  It is the day we wish we were celebrating the first teenager in our family.   Usually we do head to that Museum, but we did it early this year.  For seven years, I have not committed to anything on November 22^nd.  I know myself and my head and my heart and how untrustworthy my stability can be.  And part of me is crying out that it can’t be right, to spend this day—this Timmy day—doing something else.  And yet I know deeper down that it will be alright. 

Two rows in front of me at the meeting is another boy who is about to become a teenager.  He used to ride tricycles with Timmy and pretend to go through McDonald’s drive thru on my front walk.  But now he is taller than me and he is volunteering to host a table alongside his grandma, serving others for Thanksgiving.  And I guess the truth is that very likely Timmy would have wanted to be there, too.  Because Timmy seemed to have been born knowing that “its not about us”, but really its all about Him.  He certainly was not always so deep and mature—and I am careful to tell his brothers stories of his silliness and naughtiness, lest they grow up thinking he was perfect and they don’t measure up.  But like David of old, he had a heart after God’s, and he understood things that I am still trying to figure out.

So tomorrow we will bake a lemon cake and look through a treasure chest of little boy mementos.  We may watch a few videos and remember some funny stories.  And then we will drive to church and we will be thankful in a new way.  For though I may not feel strong enough to pull this off, I know that HE is. And maybe somehow in the process, another layer of grief can be shed. And in its place, a truer healing.