Black Friday...

"Come thou fount of every blessing. Tune my heart to sing thy grace." -Come Thou Fount, Robert Robinson

"I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations." -Psalm 57:9

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and to say I was full by the end of it would be an understatement. Let me let you in on a little secret of Leathers' Thanksgivings: Mother Susan often cooks for 20, whether there are 20 or 10. This year we had a blast with 7 of us. To say there were leftovers would be a little misleading. When I come back for Christmas we'll still be eating that stuffing, and boy was it good!

But as with every year, if yesterday was Thanksgiving, that means today is none other than that marvelously well-known "other" holiday "Sleep-off-all-that-you-ate-while-you-watch-football-and-basketball-and-eat-leftovers-while-you-decorate-for-Christmas Day." Well, at least that's what I'll be celebrating today. I suppose others also take today to fight the herds of trampling elephants at Best Buy for Black Friday.

It's funny I suppose. We here in America can take one day out of the year when we stop and pause to simply rest and give thanks for all of those things that we have been blessed with over the year. It's that one day a year when we realize how FULL our lives are with the simplest and littlest things that make our lives what they are.

Every year (except for this year for some reason), while we sit around the table filling ourselves in turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and some kind of oyster casserole for my dad, my mom stops the feast for a few moments for all of us to share what we are thankful for. It's a pretty simple ritual we participate in. Last year I was thankful for my dog (who luckily, not to mention miraculously, made it to this Thanksgiving.) If we'd gone around the table again this year, I would've said I was thankful for people and experiences who give me perspectives I didn't have before.

And yet, before we were done with the feast last night, we could have been at Walmart starting the Black Friday shopping early (in case you missed it, they started an early Black Friday special at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving.) Before the gravy had cooled on our holiday of giving thanks, people were already prepping for the early morning adventures of shopping and catching the biggest deals. What an irony that the day after we spend a holiday giving thanks for the little things, we rush out searching for all the things we want and don't really need.

Commercials and advertising are built on the premise that if they can convince us that we NEED something, that we can't survive without something, we will go out and buy it. That's why Black Friday is so successful. We can fill ourselves with and buy ourselves all the things we think we need or want at the prices that make them available to our checkbooks. But here's the thing: it's hard to be really thankful if you're already thinking about the next thing you need. How many people sit at the Thanksgiving table saying that they have all they really need only to run to the mall to get the other things they need?

I've made 2014 the Year of Thanksgiving. It's the first year that I've kept a New Year's resolution. In the book of First Samuel, after having been previously defeated by the Philistines and facing a second rout at their hands, the Israelite people stand on the edge of battle. And beyond all odds, God delivers the Philistines into their hands and they are victorious. The prophet Samuel, realizing it has been God that has led them to victory, wants to remind the Israelites, present and future, that it was not their might that won victory but God's presence. So Samuel set down a stone and named it Ebenezer so that people would see it and be reminded of God's favor. It was to remind them to be thankful!

So every night in 2014 before I go to bed, I take a small polished stone and a Sharpie and write down on the stone one thing I've been thankful for in that day. Once I've written something I place the stone in a big jar in my living room. After a week, the seven stones looked so small and insignificant in the glass jar. But month after month the pile of stones grew and grew, so much in fact that now in November the jar is nearly full.

Some days I write down the names of teenagers I work with who remind me of the immense joy and creativity life has to offer. Some days I write down the names of mentors and co-workers who offer me wisdom, insight and strength I couldn't gain on my own. Sometimes I write the names of places I've been or food I've eaten or holidays I've celebrated. Some days there are more blessings than I can count. And some days I can't think of anything that I should be thankful for.

On days like that, I write "oxygen." Every day, even the simplest and most mundane, or the worst and most stress-filled, I have life to be thankful for.

At first, I thought this was just a silly New Year's thing to do. But after 11 months, it's become a life-changing habit. Some days I carry around a stone in my pocket and when I find that thing that I'm most thankful for, I go ahead and write it down at 2 p.m. It's helped me recognize the simple blessings I experience every hour of every day. It's helped me recognize the places God has blessed me in my life the same way he blessed the Israelites in Samuel's.

We all have things to be thankful for. Every day we are blessed abundantly. To count those blessings each day is to recognize the giver of all good things. It also reminds me that there are others who don't have all that I have, that there are others whose experience of life has been harder than mine. It reminds me that I have all I'll ever need already. It reminds me that no mall, no discount, no sale, no Apple release, no Reese's Peanut Butter Cup can fill me any more than I've already been filled. My life is already complete, and I could never give enough thanks for what I have and the person God is shaping me to be. Because at the end of the day, like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, I can look at my life and say, "I've really had a wonderful life."

God has given me all I need, and if I ever forget that, just like Samuel I've almost filled a glass jar full of Ebenezers. May you give thanks for all the blessings in your life and recognize that you have all you need. May you be content with what you have and know that while you have life you always have hope.

forever unfinished...