A Toast to Thanksgiving

 

Every year, it seems that the Christmas season starts earlier. As if it’s not enough that all the stores and television commercials center around Christmas as soon as Halloween is over, now radio stations are playing Christmas carols as early as the first week of November! I’m all for everything that embodies the Christmas season, but when it starts so early it seems as though Thanksgiving simply gets skipped over.

I have always loved Thanksgiving. Even as a kid I would get a heartwarming feeling of happiness and gratitude when we celebrated the holiday together with family over a huge feast. Sure, I was excited for the Christmas season too, but I always wanted to appreciate Thanksgiving for what it was before I really got into the Christmas mindset.

Sadly, today that is harder to do. There is much more responsibility for me during the holidays now as an adult and parent than there was when I was a kid. The commercialism of Christmas which starts in early November stresses me out. I have to figure out the kids’ Christmas lists not just for my husband and myself, but for extended family as well. Then I have to think about how I can save the most amount of money on Christmas shopping: Should I shop in store or online? Should I wait for Black Friday or purchase things earlier before everything is picked over? Should I wait for Cyber Monday? Or maybe mid-December will have the best deals. All of this anxiety causes me to forget about what’s in the present, the season of being thankful.

This year, I decided that I will not partake in the Black Friday shopping frenzy, nor will I check the online deals on the evening of Thanksgiving. I decided that I want to use that time instead to really be with my family. I want to play games and watch movies with my kids. I want to share Thanksgiving dinner with friends without a time-limit for when I need to start online shopping. I want to enjoy decorating for Christmas with the family on Friday while drinking hot cocoa and listening, finally, to Christmas Carols. I want to remember Thanksgiving as the perfect foundation for the Christmas season: gratitude and appreciation for all we have.

 

So here’s to Thanksgiving, a reminder of all my blessings:  family and friends, good health, food, water, and shelter, military life (which is very easy to NOT feel thankful for!), my kids’ school and teachers, the strangers who lend a helping hand, the doors which have opened for me and the doors which have closed behind me, the lessons I’ve learned, the people I’ve met, our beautiful country and the heroes who defend it, God’s unfailing promise, and the love that surrounds all of these.

This Thursday, take a moment to raise your glass, give a toast to Thanksgiving, and think about all you are thankful for. See for yourself how your heart fills with joy. Then, you are truly ready for the Christmas season. Happy Thanksgiving!

Learning to Swim

There are some things in life that are so simple and so obvious, yet we never realize them.  We take for granted the things that are amazing in our lives because we just don’t see how much of a blessing they are.  As I talked to my dad on Father’s day, he asked how the kids were and if anything new was going on.  I told him that they would be beginning swimming lessons that week.  He was excited for them and pleased that they would be learning something that is a huge accomplishment for kids.  Somehow we got on the subject of how my brother and I learned to swim.  I told him that I took lessons but not until I was a little bit older, maybe seven or eight, and I was pretty sure my brother took lessons at our old house with one of his friends.  My dad hesitated, trying to remember, and then asked my mom if that was correct.  She affirmed it.  I knew my dad couldn’t remember much about our swimming lessons because he was always at work when we went to them.  They were usually during the day and my mom was the one to take us and see us develop our skills.  It wasn’t a big deal, and my brother and I didn’t feel bad that dad wasn’t there.  We knew that’s just how it was.  I didn’t think much more about it until a few days later when I realized something so evident, so eye-opening, that I was beside myself that I hadn’t seen it sooner. 

Being a stay-at-home mom is a difficult job.  I don’t think I need to list all of the tasks stay-at-home mothers have to complete, not to mention keeping their sanity when the kids are out of control.  I admit I am guilty of finding a way to complain about everything that is required of me as a stay-home mom and I get extremely frustrated and exhausted with the demands that are placed on me.  But there is something I have been failing to focus on, something that would send all those complaints right back into my mouth and zip it shut.  What I now see is that being a stay-home mom is one of the best gifts we can be given as moms because we don’t miss out on our children’s lives.  We are there for it all, every new accomplishment, every activity, every hug when they are sad or when they are proud of themselves and every smile on their faces when we pick them up from school.  We get to see their lives first-hand.  We are the ones they default to when they are truly upset.  More often than not, the dads don’t get those things.  They have to settle for a play-by-play story of these things.  They work all day to make money for the family at the expense that they miss out on seeing new things in their children’s lives.  They know that their kids can swim, but they don’t know how they learned to swim.

For military dads, the inability to experience their children’s lives is even greater.  Deployments take them away from their kids for many months at a time.  They have no choice but to learn about their kids accomplishments through phone calls and e-mails.  They won’t let you know it, but their hearts are breaking inside because they want to be there with their kids.  While us military wives and moms complain to them about how hard things are and how we hate doing it all by ourselves (I am regretfully guilty of this!), they are envying us because we get to see all that the kids do.  We get to hug them and kiss them.  We get to be the ones they come to.  We get the glory.

Sometimes the things we think are the hardest in life are really our greatest blessings.  I challenge you, when you are faced with obstacles, to take a step back and try to find the goodness in your circumstances.  Think about how you would feel if you had to work full time and could only see your kids in the evenings and on weekends, or if you had to be away from them for months.  When you are about ready to lock your kids in a closet for a few days, remember that you get to be there, you get to see their firsts, you are the ones they lean on.  Tell your husband thank you often and have mercy on him, because he so badly wants to switch places with you!

What Would Have Been

I often wonder, if I had known more about military life before entering into it would it have changed my decision to marry a soldier?  If I had understood more about the sacrifices that soldiers and their families make, would I have continued dating a military man?  Would I have been okay with knowing my life would be controlled by the military or the idea of taking on single parenthood for months at a time, several times over?  If I had known that life would be far from the example I had growing up, in which my dad worked regular hours and was home every night for dinner, my mom had the help of her parents and other family members with watching her kids, and we had the privilege of seeing close friends and loved ones often, would I still have chosen a life so unfamiliar? 

The truth is, these questions are impossible to answer.  I’d like to think that knowing the answers would not have made any difference because the love which was pouring out of my heart for this man was the only thing that mattered.  However, there is no way to know, no ability to go back in time and see what decision I might have made.

The funny thing is, even though my mind sometimes floats off into a daydream and I think about these things, I am so thankful I did not know how military life would be.  I cannot bear to think that if someone had told me the answers to these questions before I chose this life, before I knew how strong I could become or how important I would be to my husband and kids, I would have turned around and walked away.  I have come to believe that one of life’s blessings is not knowing the future which lies ahead of us.  If we had the ability to foresee our futures and make our own decisions based on them, how often would we choose a path which leads to discontent?  How often would we change our course for our own benefit, only to find that it is much worse than what would have been if nature took its course? 

I do not regret the life-choices I have made, nor do I think that things would have been better if I had done something different.  All of my trust rests in the fact that this is where I’m supposed to be.  This is God’s plan.  Every time I struggle with my circumstances, I try to remember how much good will come out of me being a stay-home mom and a military wife.  When I think about my desire to work, I remember that, when the time is right, God will guide me in the right direction.  I can see now how all the difficulties and frustrations I face are put in place so that I will learn to grow and persevere and to draw me closer to God.  I think about how it is not just my life in the equation, but my husband’s and kids’ too.  Everything I do affects them, and they in turn affect me.  We have formed an inseparable bond, a unit which will carry each other through thick and thin.  I may not have known what lied ahead before I embarked on this life, but by listening to the Spirit inside of me I have found the life that was chosen for me.  I can rest my mind knowing that even if I had been aware of the trials of this life before I embarked on it, my choice would have been the same.