Once you start shifting you attitude in a life filled with thanksgiving, you will notice things in your life start to take a new form. It becomes something  you know but don’t recognize as much. I mean to thing  you start saying is thank you for loosing your job, for not being able to get a new cell phone you thought you needed, to say thank you for the fact  a relationship you thought was going to lead to marriage is over. You even say thank you that you once threw out a rotten banana only to slip and fall. You start realizing  the days you thought to be grey and gloomy were really the moments that God was using to transform you. You over come all of that sticky life stuff only to come to where you are now, and hope this season of thanksgiving brings will help to awaken you to the glory of who you are. You are strong and beautiful, and even when your life is not like you want it to be or imagine it to be there is opportunity. You have a rainbow standing right before you to choose, and to seek what is next.

Living in thanksgiving everyday leads to more optimism, which (lets just break it down) is hope. When you are hopeful tomorrow will be filled with the endless possibilities, you can face a flat tire and say OK. It’s flat today but I know it can get fixed and tomorrow I will be driving down the road again. Life sometimes is filled with these moments. The secret  I found in my journey to my own discovery of truth, only proves thanksgiving is not just one day a year, but really 365 days a year.

My dad died when I was in college and it effected me beyond anything else had up to that point. I would say it effect me even more than my parents divorce and not seeing my father for fifteen years before we got the phone call he was dying form cancer. It was the day of thanksgiving actually. I could forever associate such a great holiday with such sadness, but I don’t. Instead I live the moment in thanksgiving. I might not have gotten the chance to say goodbye to the man who was my father if it hadn’t been for a few circumstances leading up to that moment. In September of the same year I had changed colleges. I chose to transfer back in state for many different reasons, but ultimately it was because I truly felt like it was the right choice, the choice that God wanted me to make. The thing about transferring was all of a sudden I found myself living close to my family, actually the same town as my grandparents. I went to church, lunch, and laundry every Sunday. I was also able to be with them all for Thanksgiving Day, when we got the call from my Aunt (my dad’s sister), saying that he was really sick and dying. She was the only family from his side who stayed in contact with me and my younger brother. She mentioned he had asked to see us, and wanted to know if we wanted the same. See if I hadn’t of transferred, I wouldn’t have been so close when all of this happened. I had originally been going to school six hours away, and the school had a absence policy that basically meant you couldn’t really miss any classes. I know they would not have been as understanding about missing finals for my father’s funeral. I know this because a friend my freshman year had lost her father to a heart-attack during midterms, and she basically had to drop out for the semester and return a year later. Part of that was due to the schools policy on missing classes. At my new college when I told the director of my department what was going on before I took off to fly to New Jersey  in order to see my dad before he passed away. Well, she basically said if you need anything let me know, she would inform all my professors. And don’t worry about work missed she would make sure I got it later. Also I had only taken two finals when I got the call he had passed away and since we needed to fly back for the funeral service, she basically was OK with me taking several in-completes. Then allowed me to take the finals the beginning of the next semester when I got back from break.

So, I live in thanksgiving that the choices and direction my left was heading leading up to such a tragic moment in my life, was all set into place for the best out come. Now when I think of the holiday I am not sad and mournful because it was a time when I found out my dad was sick. Instead it was a time when I was able to share forgiveness with my father. I was also able to understand how much my father did love me despite all the years of separation.

1st Timothy 4:4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving