Make Thanksgiving your daily habit
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- November 22, 2023
- 570
“To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.”
—Thomas Merton
I admit I goofed. My last column was about self-care. When I was done and about ready to email it, to my dismay, I realized I didn’t do a Thanksgiving column for this paper. I also write for a magazine, and I am in a series on the fruits of the spirit. I was on goodness, so I connected God’s goodness with the idea of thanksgiving. I was telling my mom about the mess-up, and she commented that thanksgiving can be every day. By that she meant we should be thankful to God every day.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving,” declares Psalm 100:3. Every day we should be thankful to God for at least one thing in our life. Do I thank God every day for his goodness? To be perfectly honest, no.
I, like most people, need help in that department. I know God’s goodness is all around me, but to take time to thank him for all of his goodness, I need a lot of work. I imagine because God’s goodness is with us all of the time it is too easy to take it for granted.
I mean it. God is good all the time. Taking a deep breath, walking and talking are nothing to be thankful for, right? Look at people who can’t do these things and tell me not to be thankful.
I passed a church with a sign that read “Thanksgiving is not just a day, but a lifestyle.” That pastor or whoever put the phrase up was right on the money. To get the most out of Thanksgiving, we must adapt a lifestyle of thankfulness. See, Thanksgiving is not just one day that rolls around in November, but if we truly want to be happy, then it needs to be a daily habit. My best friend Al told me the problem with life is “it is so daily,” then he would smile.
Life just goes easier when we give thanks, looking, on purpose, for things to be thankful for. We’ve heard of a fault finder; we need to become a thanksgiving finder.
I can’t talk plain or walk with a normal gait. In fact, one woman asked me if I had been drinking when I was trick-or-treating as a kid. Her and her husband became like grandparents to me. I still miss them. I sometimes think about how much worse I could have it. I mean I could be bed-ridden, in a wheelchair, not know where I am at, be in a group home or a nursing home. I have learned to be thankful with the way my life is.
Are there days where I am down? Without a question, yes. Being thankful it not about a feeling; it’s about perception. If I just look at my disability, I could go around saying why me. I choose to look at the good side of life. I miss loved ones who have passed away. I like to make dinner for Stacey and more. What good would it do to look at what I can’t do?
Yet that is how many people live their lives. If you asked them what they are thankful for, they can’t think of anything. But ask what is wrong in their life and they could talk until the cows come home.
Don’t be a fault finder. Become a thanksgiving finder. Remember thanksgiving is not just a day; it is a lifestyle.