The Number One Item on the Top of My Thanksgiving Checklist

I’m a checklist kind of gal and it’s getting down to the wire for planning the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. So many things to decide…Use the casual or formal dinnerware? Prepare the usual dishes or try something new? Set the table with the meal centered on the table or have a food station(buffet style)? Lunch time or Dinner time? Music or no music? Kids table or all at one table? Planned entertainment or just see how things go? The decisions go on and on.

Of all the decisions to make for what to put on the holiday meal checklist, there’s one thing I want to put right at the top so I don’t forget…Deep Thanksgiving Reflection. While I do have my own practice of journaling every day and appreciating what I am grateful for, this is different. It’s Thanksgiving! It’s a time where we as a whole nation push pause and reflect and appreciate what we are thankful for on the same day.

So what am I thankful for? Our home, our jobs, healthy food, our farm, freedom to dream and reach for our goals, central heat during the winter and air during the summer, our cars that get us safely from one place to another, the washer and dryer that seem to be in constant use, hot running water, and the mountain and lake views, just to name a few. Absolutely, those are all things to be thankful for and not take for granted. But above all that is family. Family really is what matters the most.

Family is what makes us who we are. Let’s really think about that for a minute. No one’s perfect. But our experiences primarily with our family shaped us into who we decided to be. All of the experiences we live through, good and not so good, are an opportunity to make a decision about ourselves. We can take those experiences from our past and the ones we will have in the future and learn from them, to improve who it is we want to be in this one life we have to live.

It’s like master dominos. Every person has an effect on another directly or indirectly.

My Great Uncle Harold ,whom I only met a handful of times, had an impact on me that rippled through my life. I was probably no more than 10 to 12 years old when I went to Uncle Harold’s farm for a visit. I can still see in my mind the farmhouse and the layout of their home, the horses and the hayfields, and all the books around the house that he could read at any moment he had a desire to read them again. During that visit he would ask me different history questions. Well, I didn’t know the answers to those questions. I would try and answer them with a question mark at the end of my answer:) This educated man showed concern wondering if the school wasn’t teaching me important history I should know. I can’t say it was the school’s fault. I have a very different way of learning than through a textbook. So that day Great Uncle Harold gave me two books. They weren’t history books at all. They were both old novels with threaded fabric and hard covers and no more than eight inches tall. At first I kept them safe and thought of them as a dear gift from a family member I hardly got to know. The pages were very fragile and I never wanted to worsen their condition by reading them from the original book. Any time I had to move, those two books would move with me. And I moved those treasures with me all across the country.

Those books were the catalyst for my affinity for anything old, historic, and heirloom. When I see an antique piece of furniture, an old book, an heirloom teapot, a historic building I wonder about its history. What time in history was it made? What and who was it made for? Who all handled and used it? And turns out that’s the best way I learn. It’s by seeing something I can put my hands on and learn it’s history by me being the one asking the questions and finding out the answers. Then I can put the pieces of the history puzzle together one piece at a time. I love learning about things of old, appreciating them today, and preserving them for tomorrow. So really, Uncle Harold is still teaching me to learn my history even though he isn’t here with us anymore.

What I didn’t realize in the moment was that Great Uncle Harold taught me an appreciation for things of old and a history lesson that would last me a lifetime.

That’s just one example of the multitude of experiences that had an effect on me.

And for that experience then of not knowing my history I am now thankful, because it helped me to become who I am today and who I will become in the future.

So if you already have your Thanksgiving dinner checklist or still need to put one together, remember to put “Deep Thanksgiving Reflection” at the top. Then take a moment and truly be thankful for what you do have AND who you’ve had that helped shape you into who you are today.

Who is the first person that comes to mind that you are thankful for?

What experience with them are you thankful for that made you who you have decided to become today?