From my quiet time this morning: Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:14.

I don’t know where you are in your spiritual journey, but don’t ever doubt that God speaks to us, directly, intentionally and exactly as we need, through the Scriptures! It happens all of the time and it happened to me today. If my joy is found in things on this earth, I will be joyless much of time. I am mercurial and overly analytical. My self-worth rises and falls with the numbers on the scale, my ability to do this thing or that, an unanswered text. That’s not what we are called into as believers! God’s unfailing love, hesed, is love based on a committed relationship with us. There’s an expectation that we will respond in a like manner because of our love for him. My joy, therefore, can’t be based on what’s around me. It has to have a firm foundation in the one who created joy in the first place.

You’re packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen

I’ve just decided that I’m reclaiming Thanksgiving this year. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but I’m not going to try to avoid it anymore. First of all, that’s a pointless endeavor. (Have you ever tried to dodge a national holiday? Futile!) Secondly, I have SO MUCH for which to be thankful! Between my family, friends and friends who are family, I have been richly blessed. I have friends both near and far (wherever you are, I know that my heart will go on…) and that’s a wonderful thing.

I don’t know what this “reclaiming Thanksgiving” will look like. It won’t involve turkey and dressing…I don’t know that I’ll ever be excited about traditional food on this food-centered holiday, but maybe the biggest change is in how I feel about it. It’s not that this time of year doesn’t still make me sad. It does. I miss my Mom and she loved this time of year. She would have thoroughly enjoyed a beautiful fall day like today! She even chose to get married the day after Thanksgiving because she loved this season so much. My preference would be to freeze time so that no more days pass between when she was alive and the present, but I can’t figure out how to do that. It seems time is going to keep marching forward. I can let it walk on me or I can get up and march with it.

Walk on.

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on