 Holly Shurter I mark my calendar with things I need to get done: cleaning, checking recipes, sending out invitations. I get ready in all the practical ways I can for the houseful of hungry people we'll have that day.
What I consistently leave out is getting my heart ready for the holiday. I'm so busy I forget to consider what I'm thankful for. I leave my heart unprepared for the celebration. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm always so tired the next day.
The past few years we've had a Thanksgiving Board in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. It's just the whiteboard we use every day for notes and reminders, but on Thanksgiving morning we transform it with colored markers, and begin a list of things we're thankful for. As guests and family members arrive, we invite them to write something on the board that they're thankful for. At the end of the day we date it and take a photograph of it.
It's a fun way to share our hearts with one another.
This year, I'm going to start my list earlier. I want to think about the things I'm thankful for as I go about getting ready. I want to cultivate a grateful heart before the big day.
It's not going to be a pen-and-paper list, though.
Instead, I'm going to get a Mason jar and pour in some big, fat beans. Each bean will represent one of the big things I'm thankful to God for: family, friends, home, good health, enough to eat. It shouldn't take too long to get a lot of big fat beans in my jar.
Then I'm going to take some smaller beans, and begin dropping them into the jar as I think of little things I'm thankful for a phone call from one of my kids, or a note from a friend in the mail. A sunny day. An unexpected call from my husband.
I might invite family members to contribute their own beans to my jar. My goal is to have that jar filled up with thanksgiving beans of varying sizes by Thanksgiving Day, and to have a heart full of gratitude, ready to celebrate.
With a lid and a ribbon, that jar of beans will be part of our Thanksgiving Day decoration. When someone asks why we have a jar of beans on the table, it will be fun to tell them why and maybe ask them to guess how many beans there are in the jar, or to add their own beans to it.
This year, the key to a grateful heart might be nothing more than beans.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
