On giving thanks
Our annual Thanksgiving holiday is next Thursday. Like most of 2020 it will be different. And if you’re like me there will be a little bit of melancholy mixed in with how and what we plan and do this Thanksgiving.
The central question for me this year is what I’m truly thankful for. Typically I’m busy planning the meal, inviting family and friends to join us, while Sara is busy with planning the decor for our Thanksgiving table, and we both make our home ready for the holidays.
Not that we won’t be doing most of those things. With COVID-19 modifications. With the precautions that come from being in the midst of a recovery from cancer and a bone marrow transplant that leaves me still vulnerable to infection and loss of energy. It’s been quite a year.
Thanksgiving, I’ve said before, is my favorite holiday. It is not overly commercialized (except for an even earlier push to engage in so-called “Black Friday” sales that seem to be going on right now), and it is centered in a meal, which is so human, so intimate.
For Christians, the heart of our faith is fully expressed in a meal. (I must admit I’ve mused on a Last Supper during COVID — Jesus and the disciples gathering for a meal, wearing face masks, social distancing, washing their hands constantly. Sometimes I’ve just got to laugh or I’ll just cry.)
And I’ve been asking myself, “What am I truly thankful for?”
What has helped me with the answer is a recent review of a new memoir by Michael J. Fox titled “No Time Like the Future.” It is a reflection on his struggles with Parkinson’s, as well as recent health challenges. The book puts it this way:
“Two years ago, Michael J. Fox had surgery to remove a benign tumor on his spinal cord. The actor and activist, who had been living with Parkinson’s disease for nearly three decades, had to learn to walk all over again.
Four months later, he fell in the kitchen of his Upper East Side home and fractured his arm so badly that it had to be stabilized with 19 pins and a plate. Mired in grueling, back-to-back recoveries, he started to wonder if he had oversold the idea of hope in his first three memoirs, “Lucky Man,” “Always Looking Up” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future.”
“I had this kind of crisis of conscience,” Fox said during a video interview last month. “I thought, what have I been telling people? I tell people it’s all going to be OK — and it might suck!” (Elizabeth Egan, New York Times, Nov. 13)
Reading the review, I realized my faith, and my life as a cancer survivor, has taught me something about hope. Something Michael was beginning to recognize. That hope, true hope, is an act of faith, a belief that no matter what, things will be all right. Even when they suck!
It’s understanding that the worst thing that can happen is not the last thing that will happen. To you. To me. To any of us.
Where does this hope come from? What my faith has taught me is it’s a choice. It’s a choice centered in gratitude. Of being grateful. It’s more than a feeling. Hope does not spring up because we feel great. Hope persists when we don’t feel great. When we’re scared, anxious, or troubled, or facing uncertainty.
This Thanksgiving I’m choosing to be thankful/grateful despite all evidence to the contrary. I’m grateful for my loving wife, Sara. For my friends and family. For my caregivers. For my church. For the gift of life!
It’ll be the best Thanksgiving ever. May yours as well.