THANKSGIVING

So its Thanksgiving, I think this is my favorite holiday. When I was 15 we went down to the Navajo Reservation to serve the people a Thanksgiving meal, we were there for 4 days and it was extremely awkward at first. There was a storm coming and this man, who had practically nothing, prayed to God that he could find someone to patch his roof. When we were pulling into church, we passed his house and saw the condition of the house. The pastor asked us to help this man instead of doing work on the church, like what are plan was to do, because this man had great influence in the community and we gladly accepted. We decided to just give him a new roof and fix the siding on his house. The man started to tell the community what we were doing and started to spread the word of how much Jesus loved him! When people heard, they wanted us to join them for a meal, we said we would actually love to serve them a meal and it was so surreal. You could really tell on some of their faces how sad they were; Thanksgiving for this group of people was not a day the celebrated but a day they mourned. We all eventually were laughing and playing games, when a mother came up to me and just said "Thank you". I nodded, feeling the weight of her thanks.

Positioning yourself to be grateful can be hard; letting go of stubbornness, but once humility smacks you in the face (because it will), you're in the sweet spot. Thanksgiving is always a nice reminder to stop and be with family or friends who you are thankful for but I wish I was better at being thankful in my day to day life. So I'm going to start a challenge and I invite you to join me. For 30 days, I'm going to write down and declare out loud 5 things I'm thankful for. AND just to be accountable, I'm going to be sharing my list right here on the site. So if you need inspiration on what to be thankful for, you can look at mine. It doesn't have to be all serious, just whatever the first 5 things are, write them down and say them out loud! Words are powerful and they do affect the atmosphere you live in, so by saying them out loud, your bringing change to your environment.

Happy Thanksgiving!