On Thanksgiving

Be patient with yourselves, my friends.

This is my Thanksgiving wish for you.

That you will be patient with yourself.

That you will not expect perfection from yourself, or your pie, our your family.

That you will not put all your hopes for things to be different into this one meal.

But that instead, you will dole out huge helpings of grace and mercy. Patience and laughter. Love and kindness.

To yourself and to those around your table.

This pictures are from last year. They are from Thanksgiving 2015.

Why am I just now posting them?

Well, because last year I did not dole out enough grace for myself.

Last year I thought these images were not “blog worthy.”

I thought my table was too messy. The tepees too unfinished. The lighting too… who knows.

Whatever my reasons, I didn’t post these pictures. It was silly and vain and filled with self-distrust and stemming from exhaustion and unrealistic expectations.

And then this past week, when I went to look for Thanksgiving 2015 in my blog archives, and remembered I had never posted these images, I realized my mistake. My brain fart.

You see, I had forgotten.

I had forgotten to be kind to myself. To serve myself a humongous portion of grace and patience.

And the outcome was almost tragic.

For me.

This blog is not always where I do my best work, but it is where I record my life.

It is still, after ten years, what blogs were in part started to be, a scrapbook of a life – specifically my life.

So I dug out these images, worked over the lighting in Pic Monkey, and uploaded them , over-kill tablescape and all.

Because I don’t want to ever forget how much fun it was to pick all the twigs and leaves and grasses from our farmstead for the very first time.

How giddy I was to walk out my back door and onto our land which was full of berries and branches and vines!

And so yes, maybe I used them ALL. And maybe no one knew what to do with the decorative grasses at their place settings, but boy howdy did I have fun laying it all out.

 

And I want to remember that we had four generations under my roof for the day, and especially what fun it was to have a toddler around again!

I want to always remember watching my nephew and my grandmother play together, my sister teaching him how to use the tepee.

 

And the food. Good gracious ALL the food. So much. So good. So much abundance.

Our first holiday in our new kitchen.

So many dreams coming true at long last, all at once.

Getting to host a family holiday at our Farm of Dreams after a decade of wishing and pining and giving up and wishing again.

Here we were at last, with more pies than we could eat and a full table.

Why on earth should I care that I forgot to move the whip-cream can out of this shot? I shouldn’t!

And yet I almost let little things like this derail me from documenting this day.

 

Was it a perfect day? No, I suppose it wasn’t. Though I can’t tell you why now.

I don’t remember.

 

What I remember now, a year later, is that we gathered together and broke bread. We drank wine and ate pie and said prayers and the baby fell asleep in his daddy’s arms.

What I remember now, looking at the pictures, is that it was one of my favorite Thanksgivings.

Busy table and all.

So be patient with yourselves my friends.

There might be a lot of chances to get caught up in the details. In the politics and the recipes and the tablescapes.

But there will also be a lot of opportunities to serve up grace, to heap an extra portion of “whatever works” to someone who is worried about failing you. There will be a hundred tiny chances to be patient with yourself, with where you find yourself.

I pray you will embrace them all.

Happy Thanksgiving friends.

I am so thankful for YOU.