Today is Thanksgiving Day. Actually every day is thanksgiving day, but today is the day America set aside to Praise God for bringing them through to a new land and giving them new friends and many new things to learn about…truly a land of new opportunities. So the Pilgrims and the Indians learned to work together and were able to help each other survive and learn new skills and they were so thankful they had a big celebration feast and they all ran off to Meijer to buy a big turkey and sweet potato casserole, green beans and some pecan pie! Not!

They were so thankful that they shared with each other out of what they had on hand from their own lands and root cellars, the men having gone out with bow and arrow or musket and catching deer, wild turkey or pheasant (we don’t really know what all they did or did not eat), but they made do with what they had, shared liberally, and were just glad to be together giving thanks with and for each other.

Why are you writing about this, you might say? Today, this Thanksgiving, was a bit different for me than in the past. My family is all grown and are scattered all over the land and sea and some had other families they were ‘thanking’ with, so I decided to head to town. I went to our brand new Fresh Thyme Market and had some salted caramel coffee and some yogurt covered Christmas pretzels and looked over all the wonderful food and thoroughly enjoyed myself! I ended up buying a couple ground sausages for dinner tomorrow to have for my brother and his wife and that was it!

I had talked with most of the kids early in the morning and I went home to cook my supper, my own thanksgiving dinner.

Guess what I cooked? A skillet full of ‘pottage’, chopped kale, chopped onion, frozen corn and peas and seasoned it with garlic, sea salt and cracked pepper and topped it all off with feta cheese. I made some orange, banana, walnut muffins earlier and that was my dessert. Rather unconventional, but I was happy! The thought came to me, I have so much to be thankful for, God has met all my needs, I didn’t need to have to have turkey, and cranberry and pie to make my day. It was OK to eat from what I had on hand. After all, it was just me, and that was fine with me. I’m not opposed to tradition, but this is how it worked today for me.

I thought, ‘how nice it is to be content even though you may not be doing things the way others are doing things’. They do what works for them; I do what works for me. It takes all the pressure off… knowing it is okay to be thankful with what I have all by myself and be happy for everyone else being thankful wherever they may be.