Thanksgiving Begins with You

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Thanksgiving is a season for giving thanks. Saying thank you. Being thankful. We celebrate with a table of food, family, friends, and a parade or two, maybe some football, definitely a lot of food. And depending on your traditions, there might be a few minutes of sharing at the dinner table. We go around and everyone shares something they're thankful for this past year.

In the Higham house, we do all of that; the food, family, and sharing. A number of years Amy started the tradition of having all of us share the things we were thankful for. She wrote those items down in the back of our, Thanksgiving, A Time To Remember book, by Barbara Rainey. Every year we go around sharing things we thankful for like our family, food, a house, etc. Sometimes the sharing is deep and spiritual, most of the time it feels pretty generic. maybe you've experienced something similar. 

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And maybe there's nothing wrong with generic, but is there more that we can be thankful for? Can we teach them to be thankful for more that food on the table and a roof over their heads. Again, not that these are bad.

Is there a way to take our thankfulness to the next level? Can we stir their hearts to reflect on things that are deeper, more substantial? Is there a way to teach and live a life of thankfulness?

As I think about this, I am forced to consider my own habits and how I think and express gratefulness in my life. After all, if I want my kids, my family, to be grateful, I must live with a heart full of gratefulness. So here's what I'm thinking.

1. Make Thanksgiving more than a day

Sometime we get into the habit of seeing thankfulness as a holiday. I include myself in this. It's easy to walk through a day, a week, a month, and not really reflect or think about the things we are thankful for. We get caught up in our careers, our schedules, our To Do Lists, our lives, and/or the lives and schedules of our kids. Even worse, we get all caught up in our stress, frustrations, disappointments, and our complaining and we don't think about the things we are thankful for. That is until we're sitting around the table and someone all of a sudden asks what we're thankful for. Then we stumble to find the words to express how or why we should be thankful on this sacred day of thanks.

But what if we saw thankfulness as more than a holiday. What if we developed the habit of being thankful every day? What if a few awkward moments of stammering, we learned how to express gratefulness on a daily basis?

To do this I think it takes both a change of heart and a change of mind. Let me ask, do move through your day looking for things to be thankful for? When you do find something to be thankful for, do you express gratefulness? To do so requires that we change how we think and how we process what's happening around us. If you were to pause, open your eyes, and ask God to show you what's around you I believe you would find plenty to be grateful for.

Let thankfulness be a daily practice. Develop the habit of being and expressing thankfulness every day.

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2. Say you are Thankful

How often do you say that you are thankful? No, not saying, Thank You. I mean, being truly thankful for something or someone in your life, and expressing it.

I think it's easy to say, thank you. It's polite. It's what we do. But do we express gratefulness, and do we do it enough so that we are passing gratefulness along to our children? We need to say we're thankful. And we need to do it more than at Thanksgiving.

Start this week. When you are moved by gratefulness, say it. Share it with your kids. And make it more than just saying, you're grateful. Explain the why. Why are you thankful? Take the time to explain why you are grateful. Doing so takes it to the next level. It also helps you learn how to communicate and express your gratefulness. By doing so, you will become more aware and better at recognizing your own gratefulness and why you're grateful.

You're thankful. Say, you're thankful.

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3. Let your Kids see Thankfulness

Live in the light, right? You're kids are watching you. They're always watching you. And, as they watch you, they are learning from you. As parents of five, four of them now young adults, Amy and I can see ourselves in our kids. In things they say, how they think, interests, likes, even in their ideologies, theology, and faith; we see ourselves. For the last 26 years, they have been watching us, learning from us, even when we didn't think they were.

You're kids are watching you. Learning from you. The question than is, what are they seeing and what are they learning? Are they seeing gratefulness in your life, your marriage, your family?

Make gratefulness part of your family values. Make a point to discuss, share and live thankfulness.

​- jay

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