Mayflower, Pinta, and Santa Maria?

So, Thanksgiving is Thursday, and Christmas is just around the corner. I am beyond excited, let's just get that out in the open right now. Thanksgiving I only like because I am a traditionalist. I rarely think of the Mayflower on Thanksgiving, in fact, if I am going to be honest I can never remember if the Mayflower goes with Thanksgiving, or if it was the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. And quite frankly, it doesn't matter that much to me. They were all boats. I know that. I also know that a holiday where the main objective is to give thanks is all good. Turkey, eh, I could take it or leave it. The sentiment though, I think we need to pause and give thanks more often, so I am all about it.

It is easy for me to be thankful. I have a wonderful family, job, friends, and good health. I know what it is to love and be loved. I have woken to the pitter patter of little feet running down the hall, and have fallen asleep with the warmth of sweet baby breath on my cheek. I have danced in the kitchen with my husband, to a soundtrack in my own mind, while waiting for the bacon and eggs to cook. I have had loss, but I have not had the kind of earth shattering, life altering loss that crushes me under the weight of it.

So many people don't find it quite so easy to give thanks. They struggle with health issues, with brokenness, and they live with a hole in their heart etched from unspeakable loss. Just thinking about it breaks my heart. The thing is, that they inspire me because even those people in my life living in utter despair find things to be grateful for. It's like they know that a choice has been set before them, and they choose gratitude. Grateful people aren't necessarily happy. Some of the most grateful people I know cry all the time, but I haven't seen a more beautiful thing than when someone with every reason to be bitter chooses to give thanks. It is humbling for me to see, and I hope a reminder for those of us who don't have to dig quite as deep to find things to show gratitude for, to show it all the more. And may those of us who "have" this holiday season, be looking to help others have a little too.

How do you force gratitude if you don't really "feel it"? I don't know. I think maybe gratitude is just seeing what you are instead of what you aren't. It's seeing what you have instead of what you don't have, and it's seeing how far you have come, and not how far you have left to go. It's focusing on whatever beautiful thing you had, rather than on the pain of losing it. I think, at its most basic level, being grateful means you don't feel entitled to anything. When no one owes you anything, or you don't see yourself as a "good person" who "deserves better", then everything is more than you could have asked for. Maybe gratitude is just the fruit of humility. Live humbly, and gratitude will abound.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May you be surprised by how many blessings you find yourselves surrounded by. Most importantly, may you spend a few minutes looking around to see them.

:)

Oh, and the boats are important, so here you go. Thanks Google...
The Mayflower was the ship that brought the Puritans (pilgrims) to the new world where they could escape the tyranny of the King of England (James 1) and the Anglican Church. (The church established by Henry the Eighth as the official Church of England (Angle-land) when he broke ties with the pope and started his own church). The Plymouth colony was begun in 1621 by these Pilgrims.

Columbus, 129 years earlier, had sailed in search of a better trade route to the orient. He proposed, properly, that one might sail around the world. He failed, however, when he discovered that the Americas got in the way of that route. His ships were the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria.