Thanksgiving

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My First Turkey Dinner Was Amazing

I had my first turkey dinner the other day.

My first turkey dinner was amazing

I mean, there has to be a first for everything, doesn’t there? 

There was the first time you tied your shoe laces. Maybe you even remember that time. 

I still have a faint memory of me sitting on the steps by the back door of our house when I shouted, “I did it!” And my mom came running to look.  

That had to be about sixty years ago that I tied my shoes laces for the first time. 

I’ve had many firsts since then. We all have.

One really memorable first for me was skating on an outdoor rink at a school yard. 

I was alone; it was probably about 9:30 pm. There were no lights, only the light of the moon reflecting off the ice.

It wasn’t the first time I had skated, but it was the first time I had skated after having surgery to repair an artery in my leg. 

I had injured it playing hockey and was now carrying a six inch, eighteen stitch scar at the top of my leg. I wondered if I would be able to skate again so I headed to a school rink late at night to test it out. 

I remember skating around that rink in the dark, being so thankful that I was alright and that I could skate with no pain or restriction. 

I remember just thanking God over and over and over as I buzzed around the rink taking slaps against the boards.

I guess in the same way that skate was my first, yesterday my turkey dinner was also the first of a kind. 

You see, it was the first time that our daughter cooked turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. 

And she did really well – delicious, I might add!

There had to be a first time, and the situation presented itself this year. This was it. 

Over dinner we talked about the first time Lily had made a turkey dinner. She and I had been married just a couple of months. She thought she would do it all from scratch … except for raising and feeding the turkey herself. 

She even made pumpkin pie from scratch. After making the pie and commenting on how hard it was to cut up the pumpkin, and how time consuming it was to cook and prepare it, a friend informed Lily, “You know you can buy cooked pumpkin in a can for the pie filling.” 

Lily responded, “Wait. What?!”

She’s never made it from scratch since. 

Well, Karlie had her mom’s experience to guide her in making her pumpkin pie and first turkey dinner. 

A “Griswold Christmas Vacation” it was not. No exploding turkey. 

Everyone raved at how good everything was … even the stuffing – an old secret family recipe that some say Karlie made better than her mom. 

I guess this means that we will be eating turkey dinners for years to come.

Here’s the thing: Often our prayer time ends rather abruptly. We get to the end of what we want to say to God and we wrap it up quickly with an “amen”. Let me challenge you to try something for the first time: Linger after you’ve finished your list to God. Ask Him a question and just wait. Listen for what He might bring to your mind. Your first time might turn into many more times to come.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What “first” have you experienced in the last year? Leave your comments and questions below.

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When Your Agenda Is Not Your Agenda

Sometimes you don’t have control over your agenda. Circumstances can take precedence, or a boss may place demands on you, but whatever the case, you know when you are not in control of your day.

your agenda

This weekend I did a lot of hanging around – it was Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. We do it earlier than the States, probably because it gets cold earlier. We’re still harvesting in mid October, but by the time the end of November comes around, places like Saskatchewan and Alberta can be deep in snow.

This Thanksgiving we had our family around and that meant just hanging out and carving each other up as we reminisced of years gone by.

I discovered that with all the family here my agenda was not my own. I didn’t get to do what I wanted when I wanted.  

Even writing this blog didn’t happen early in the morning when I like to write. I was out to the stores three times and each time the purpose was primarily for someone else.

It was interesting because it reminded me of about a twenty year stretch of my life.

When Lily and I were married, we waited about four years before we had kids. In that time our agenda was our own. We did what we wanted when we wanted and for how long we wanted to do it.

But from the moment our first child, Karlie, was born things changed. Our agenda each day was not really our own.

It was high-jacked everyday after that, in some form or fashion, by our kids … until our second child, Mike, moved into his own place.

Then, as quickly and miraculously as we had lost control of our daily agenda, we got it back. 

In fact, we’ve had our agenda back for so long that it’s difficult to remember what life was like when we had a couple of pirates controlling the ship for so many years.

Well “matey”, I guess I just rediscovered what it’s like to have Captains Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow battling for control of the details of our day.  

It’s always interesting – never a dull moment – and there is lots of comedy.

But I’m not doing what I might have planned if I was in control of my agenda.

For one thing I would have had my blog post written long ago. I also would have felt free to do the things that were on my list of things to do. 

… But when I think of what is on my to-do list, there are a whole lot of things I don’t really want to do. 

So the high-jacking of my agenda might not have been a bad thing after all. 

Maybe what’s really at stake for me is the feeling of freedom. Freedom is not a real thing because I’m either tied to my list or someone else’s agenda. 

… For some reason, I just feel more free with my list. 

It’s all moot because everything went back to normal on Monday night. I got my agenda back. 

Here’s the thing: We like our freedom so much that we don’t like to give our agenda up for anyone, even God. But your freedom is really an illusion because there is always someone or something in control of your agenda. It comes down to whether you choose to feel free with God’s agenda or someone else’s. Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Choose God and choose His freedom.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who has control of your agenda? Leave you comments and questions below.

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The Real Focus Of Thanksgiving

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is all about turkey. Well, it’s all about family and being thankful, but we do all that while eating turkey.

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Maybe it’s because we are thankful that, at some point around the table, the topic of stuffing comes up. Every family seems to have a few people who are really thankful for stuffing – not stuffing in general mind you, but their particular stuffing.

Theirs is the best, better than the in-laws, better than store bought (can you buy store bought stuffing?) … better than the stuffing you had last year at your best friend’s home.

Stuffing is always passed down from generation to generation. It’s never your stuff that you make, but it’s mom’s stuffing, or grandma’s, or granny’s, or baba’s stuffing. Notice it’s never Grandpa’s stuffing?

The biggest ingredient that I can figure in stuffing is bread, but after the bread it gets fairly specialized from there. Often there are some ingredients in the recipe which make it distinctive and more delicious than any other stuffing you’ve ever tasted.

I have to jump in here and make a confession: I don’t like stuffing. There have been a few times in my life that I’ve tried it, mostly because someone has begged me to try it on account of it being so amazing. To me it’s all much the same.

But in our house you don’t really make that view public, like I’m doing here. You see, anyone can cook a turkey and it will generally taste the same. But oh, the stuffing is unique, and it must be of an exact consistency with a taste that leaves the patron wondering, “What does she put in that stuffing? I’ve just got to know.”

But you also know that there will be ingredients in that stuffing that will not be revealed because they are secret. You would have to be locked in the basement, chained to the pool table for at least 35 years if it was ever discovered you had found out the secret to the best stuffing in the world.

Personally, I think stuffing makers think way too much about their stuffing. Let’s all remember it is just flavoured bread, jammed up inside a turkey for about six hours, while it gets all steamy, sweaty in there.

We rave over stuffing but nobody is asking to smell my gym socks after sitting in my gym bag for a day and there’s a few similarities there.

But that’s okay, keep your secret ingredients, keep your little smirk at the table when people try to probe you for information. I’m not going ask; I don’t really care. I’m not even going to try the stuffing this year.

I’d share some secrets in this piece but I don’t want to potentially be passed over for what I’m really looking forward to, that being the turkey. Because after all, when I sit down to the table on Thanksgiving, it’s the turkey, not the stuffing, that I’m thankful for.

Here’s the thing: Spiritually we can get sidetracked so easily from the main thing. We can focus on good things, and put a lot of our effort into really good things, things we have come to appreciate and view as important. But the main thing is that we are growing in our relationship with Christ. Christ is who we should be thankful for and focused on. If we are not focusing our efforts on being more like Him, then we are concentrating on good things that taste good to some people but missing the real focal point of our lives.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What gets you sidetracked from the main thing of being more like Christ? Leave your comment below.

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Sometimes Change is Difficult

As your family gets older, you find some things change, some things don’t. This year, for a change, we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving up at our cottage.

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It’s the first time that all four of us have been there at the same time. We’ve owned it for about five years, but for most of that time our daughter Karlie has been out of the province.

And son Mike, well, he came up once the first year with some buddies and it was cold, rainy and miserable the whole time. He’s never been back.

But times change. Karlie now lives only a couple hours away and Mike, well, we twisted his arm, with the promise of a golf game.

This was going to be a big deal, so my wife Lily spent most of Saturday preparing food, baking, and gathering what she would need to build a Thanksgiving turkey dinner up at Sauble Beach.

As I started to pack the car Sunday afternoon, that’s when I noticed that not all things change somethings remain the same.

When we used to go away as a family, the day we packed and left was always a little tense for Lily. In the last while, when it’s just been the two of us, she’s been much more relaxed about it.

Not yesterday. Some latent matriarchal hormone kicked in and she was in my face while I was packing the car. She was stressed and hovering around me. I could feel a couple of very intense eyes, burrowing holes in the back of my head like lasers.

It was not an easy task to pull off, even without her there. Our car is a small Hyundai Accent and we had to cram two golf bags in it, along with all the food and other stuff … a big change from when the kids were little and we used to travel in a big ol’ Safari van, a 7-seater for the four of us.

On our way up, we had to grab some dinner. However, I made the mistake of not stopping where there was a variety of restaurants, opting to get farther on our journey.

Well, by the time we found a restaurant most of us were happy to eat at, we were all pretty hungry. However, when we got inside, Mike didn’t want anything on the menu. We all ate except him.

It just reminded me of going camping one time as a family when my dad was with us. We had stopped to eat at a restaurant of Dad’s choosing, and somehow Mike – who was about 14 at the time – didn’t like the menu and didn’t eat anything. This experience was like deja vu!

But when we got up to the cottage that’s when I noticed the biggest change. We were all sitting around talking, I fell asleep in my chair, and the kids took the car into town to grab a midnight snack.

Here’s the thing: In order to develop your relationship with God, you have to notice the things in your life that are resistant to change – attitudes, emotions and actions. You have to acknowledge them, confess them and figure out a way to get beyond them so that you can continue to grow closer to God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you found to be hard to change in your life? Leave your comment below.