A New Take on Giving Thanks

Good ol’ Thanksgiving.

Over the past few years I have come to recognize and appreciate the Thanksgiving holiday. Growing up it was just another reason the family came together to eat a delicious meal. We would spend one day on the weekend with my grand parents and my half brother who would join us at my parents house for a meal similar to that we would indulge in on Christmas. One other day on the weekend we would head into the big city to join in the festive feast with my mom’s side of the family—the whole family, being many cousins, aunts, uncles and my grandparents. Both gatherings included someone saying grace before the meal expressing more gratitude than any other time of the year, munching down on mashed potatoes, perogies (yum!), cabbage rolls and other generic celebratory meal food, topped off with the classic pumpkin pie with larger-than-needed dollops of freshly whipped cream.

Family, food and fun… what more do you need? Thanksgiving was just getting together with family, eating food and hanging out. The random extra thankfulness during grace I never gave much thought to. This was how we did thanksgiving. That’s it, that’s all.

As I get older I come to learn more about how the “Thanksgiving Sprit” needs to be included in our every breathe, every action, every moment and how we need to get real about this fact when it comes to the holiday.

We rarely come together on Thanksgiving because we are full to the brim with thankfulness and we want to bless those closest to us with delicious meals literally made with love. These things happen throughout the year in expected moments that truly make us feel thankful for our many blessings in life.  The holiday is a nice, slightly forced way, to get together and make us be thankful. I guess every now and then we need a kick in the butt to get us into gear! That should be the real reason for Thanksgiving—a reminder of how we are to act every day of every year. We shouldn’t base our lives around one day but allow the day to infiltrate our every day lives.

Last year I had the opportunity to celebrate American Thanksgiving. To form a generic statement—Americans tend to take their Thanksgiving very seriously. 

*Example: I was living in a house with five others and one gentleman in particular had a strict “no Christmas music before Thanksgiving” rule that he was quite dedicated to (hooray for Canadian Thanksgiving in October! Bring on the Christmas music!). 

I drove down the California coast to spend Thanksgiving with a co-worker and her family. We had incredible appetizers, a traditional meal (sweet potato casserole, and other generic American things I’ve never had as part of the Thanksgiving meal before) and played games everyone took part in after the last bits of food were stuffed into our already overfull bellies. The biggest part of this for me was, before grace was said and we devoured in minutes the meal that took hours to prepare, we all went around and said something we were thankful for—generic ‘friends and family’ aside. It was wonderful to hear the assorted sentiments expressed from the varied crowd. My pick for what to be thankful for was transportation. I clearly remember being thankful that a friend was home for the weekend and allowed me to borrow his car to make the drive out. I was thankful for the car, for being able to drive, for flying all the place I had the opportunity to go, thankful for my bicycle back home and even walking as a mode of transportation. Taking the time to think ‘outside the box’ of the generic relationship sentiments encouraged me to be thankful for things I otherwise forget to be thankful for.

We need to let the ‘outside the box’ thinking of what we are thankful for infiltrate our minds to become part of our daily thinking. Could you imagine if you took time in your exact state—right now—to be thankful for what is around you? I am thankful for carpenters who build sturdy chairs, I am thankful for farmers who dedicate their lives to growing and harvesting tea that is able to be transported all the way to Canada for me to sip. I am thankful for technological advances and that God has given people the talents and passions to be developing the technology that allows me to sit on a computer and type words people will be able to see over the Internet! I can see, I can type, I can smell, taste, function to the best of my ability to do things to glorify God in every moment of my life!

When it comes to the injustice surrounding us in the world we can be thankful that God is just and that He has put the passion in people’s hearts around the world to seek justice. A favourite quote goes as follows:

 “Yes, God calls us to relieve suffering and bring about justice-- absolutely. But God and His glory must be the driving force for this mission, not the plight of humanity." From Godspeed by Britt Merrick. 

With God and His glory behind our passion for justice how can we forget to be thankful for a God who loves love and justice and restoration? I am thankful that love, justice and restoration occur and will continue to occur until all the captives are set free!

It is impossible to not be thankful. Literally, Impossible.

As someone with a new take on Thanksgiving, I hope you too have found the ability to have the Thanksgiving spirit overflow into every aspect of your every day life. Give thanks constantly and you will see how much in your life you truly have to be thankful for.

Follow me on Instagram @loveinspireschange

2 Weeks Feel Like 2 Months

It's been two weeks but it feels like two months....at times anyway....and we all feel like it.

I have started my Fellowship with Not For Sale and, as you can tell from the title and opening sentence, I am two weeks in. It has been an interesting, fun, and tiring two weeks. And it leaves me excited for the next however many weeks we have left.

Let's just say, finally arriving in El Granada was  a relief. Saying goodbye to JP at the airport was hard (I obviously cried like a baby...a really unhappy baby) but once I was on the plane to Vancouver I was good to go. I sat next to this wonderful lady and we chatted about our lives. It was a treat to speak with someone who was actually genuinely interested on the journey I was about to embark on. We swapped book recommendations and she told me about her family and growing up in San Francisco. She recommended a few places to visit and we parted ways at the airport wishing each other the best life has to offer.

I thought all would be well going through immigration to the US (which you do in Vancouver) but it wasn't. They wanted to ask me a few more questions about what I was doing in the US, which was fine and dandy, until that caused me to miss my flight. I was crying...again....sad I was leaving JP, frustrated that at first they told me I wouldn't miss my flight and then I did, and feeling bad that they wouldn't let me use my cell phone at that moment to text my ride saying NOT to show up at the airport yet. Knowing that someone you've never met before is going out of their way to pick you up at the airport, and not being able to let them know you won't be arriving on time, is just plain ridiculous to me. However, once the gentleman asked me the two questions he needed to, I was on my way. That, of course, came after he mentioned to me "You are  leaving your husband for 6 months AND you missed your flight... There's no need to cry"....for real?

The airport adventure continued from there....all the flights to San Francisco were oversold and everyone was showing up for their flights. Since It was "my fault" I missed my flight, I was the last in line on stand-by. Although waiting wasn't fun, I did meet a handful of wonderful people also flying on stand-by that were so encouraging and sympathetic. I was so blessed to finally get on a flight 6.5 hours after my original flight was supposed to be leave. As I got on the plane and saw the others I had made friends with who were already on, we all smiled and felt excited that I was finally able to get where I needed to be. I arrived in San Francisco but my checked bag did not.

At times like these, the realization of how blessed I am to have a husband who is incredible is, well, incredible. He took time to call Air Canada and figure out all the shenanigans with my baggage. It arrived the next day in the afternoon and I could finally be warm with slippers and a blanket....In El Granada at this time of year it's cloudy, windy and cold, averaging around 14-15 degrees a day.

The two Fellows at the house when I arrived were Jackson (who picked me up from the airport) and Alicia. Both of them are rad Christian folks who I get along well with.  Alicia and I get along very well as we are both super chill tea drinkers who like to chat about God and watch cute movies. Jackson is upbeat, full of energy and spunk, and is Manly (Inside Joke)!

The first day of the Fellowship was spent learning about our tasks, meeting the staff, having meetings, and doing some intense Boot Camp with Jill, our Fellowship Director. Jill is super intense, full of life, and 110% passionate about what she does. She has quite the resume and so much knowledge that she could talk for hours. She often starts explaining something, then gets REALLY into it and starts drawing graphs and charts, and us fellows frantically try to write it down or take pictures of it all because it's so informative and we want to make sure we catch everything before she erases it. Let's just say, within the past 2 weeks, the knowledge we have gained from Jill alone is absolutely incredible!

Over the past 2 weeks we have had time to "settle" into our roles here. By "settle" I really mean start to figure out what we are here for. Each fellow has been assigned to a different area. Each of those areas are specific to what we can "bring to the table" and is what we  are best suited to. Within that, with Jill as our overseer, we also have supervisors who are our main "go-to" staff member. They are the ones teaching us our day-to-day and we are  going to be helping them out with their work. I am helping out Ethan with the tour. Ethan had been away until today which made my first 2 weeks kind of "up in the air". I spent time doing random odd jobs and checking and responding to general emails that hadn't really been checked since the last fellowship left.

I had a chance to go for coffee with Ethan today and it got me really pumped for the time I will be spending on the fellowship. We chatted about the upcoming fall tour, the upcoming 2013 tour and about other general  exciting future endeavours involving tour and Not For Sale. It was so exciting to see his energy. We also reminisced about Warped Tour and old school bands that we used to love. What I originally thought was going to be a half hour chat easily turned into 2 hours. I got back to the house and was SO PUMPED about all the fun shenanigans that is going to transpire this fall. It was encouraging and energizing... exactly what I needed.

A few random notes about where I am and how I am doing:
-It's cloudy, cold, foggy and windy most of the time. However, the past few days have been gorgeous out...gorgeous meaning the sun has been shining, which makes a world of a difference.
-There is nothing really going on during the week but the weekend here is pretty lively with free live music (Just got back from listening to a blues band!) and farmers markets. This is nice because during the week when you work you don't feel  like  you are missing out on anything.
-I have started to run (well, more like jog). I went 4 times this past week and have really enjoyed it. I like to go in the mornings and run by the ocean. Listening to the ocean in the morning is one of my favourite things.
-Everyone in the house gets along really well. Everyone has completely different  personalities but it works well together. It's nice. I look forward to bonding more and more as time goes on.
-I have named myself the "grandma" of the house.  I go to bed earlier then everyone else, get up earlier than everyone else, and even have my own room and bathroom. I'm the cheap one who doesn't go out and is content to sit at home. Basically, I'm an old person.
-I love cats. This I knew already but when boredom strikes in the evenings I can frequently be caught browsing cats_of_instagram on instagram. Awesome.
-I like making floral arrangements. There are fun and different flowers here and I am the person of the house who goes out to the yard and picks flowers to have on the table. It's fun.
-Birthday Oreos. Enough said.

-Skype is the best invention ever. To be able to talk with JP AND see him while we chat is the biggest blessing I can think of. I miss him more than anything and am so pumped that he is proud  of me for doing this. It is encouraging and encouragement from him means more than from anyone else. I like him and love him. He's the best.
-PC FOR THE WIN!! My Dell, while old and rather "moody", has been beating the MACs of the fellows. It is working better than ever and I couldn't be more ecstatic about it. Minus the duck tape I needed to use on it today...but we won't talk about that.

I know people have been wanting to read about my time here. I've been very busy and appologize for a fairly lengthy yet still vague blog post. As I start to post more consistently, I can go more in depth yet keep the overall length shorter.

As the Fellowship continues I know that, although these two weeks have felt like two months with all the work we have been doing, it will soon enough fly by and I'll be on to the next adventure. I am pumped that my next adventure will involve JP by my side and am excited about all the wonderful plans God has for us. Until that next adventure, I will enjoy all that this one has to offer.

Until next time!