Kudos to those of y’all who read through the whole post to the end, y’all the real MVP’s!
The holidays can be a very bittersweet and trying time for many. Yesterday this post popped up in my memories from 15 years ago. This was the first year my mom had left us on August 1st of that year after having had a total episode on my 16th birthday a week before that.
This was only the 2nd time in my life growing up that I can remember we ate out for the holiday, the first time was when we had first moved to that place we were currently living and a lot of our dishes still hadn’t been unpacked and we weren’t fully moved in or had the ability to as we’d moved into an Amish farm and didn’t have the place hooked up to any electric or running water for the first 6 months having lived there so we went to Golden Corral that first year as we did that year in my mothers absence.
It was different without my mom but we all still went out and had a good meal nonetheless.
As you get older one thing you have to learn regarding certain celebrated traditions is that time, age and life will force you to change how you celebrate them.
This is not to say that they are any less meaningful or that their underlying meaning changes, no. It just means as we get older circumstances change. Whether loved ones leave us through death or sheer selfish abandonment we just have to find a way to, improvise, adapt and OVERCOME.
We HAVE to, because this is such a special and PRECIOUS season that we should NEVER allow ourselves to miss out on. And while it can be extremely difficult after having just lost a loved for instance, we HAVE to make the best of it…
Because as DIFFICULT as it can be and while it will never truly make up for their not being here (NOTHING CAN) when we REALLY take a step back and look at the BIGGER picture we will find that most of us still have so much more left to be grateful for and so much more left to GIVE…
Even though it doesn’t exactly seem like it right now…
What Matters Most
Today however on my walk with Smokey Artichokey I reflect on Thanksgiving through the years and why I’m thankful for each and every single one of them — because while in some of those instances we may have not been able to celebrate in the traditional way as we had other Thanksgiving’s, maybe the food wasn’t holiday themed at all or perhaps it wasn’t even around a proper dining table setting or likely didn’t even include turkey, dressing/stuffing or cranberry sauce. It’s what it DID include that mattered the most and THAT was each other.
Not where we were, or what we ate or how much we ate. But WHO we ate it with…
Regardless of where we are at now, what was or wasn’t, who was or who wasn’t there then in that moment we had more than we could have asked for because we were all alive and well together.
And while that circle may get smaller as we grow older that simple fact still remains and the cycle of life forces us to accept this fact and this is that we MUST cherish every moment we have because in some rare instances the good, the bad, the ugly it all kinda blends together when you get older and more and more of those chairs at the table become emptier and emptier due to them no longer being here at all.
And while I fully understand family drama and how in some instances those bonds/relationship may never be able to be repaired this doesn’t make any of the good times that was had from back then any less special because again while life can seem so long and our moments of turmoil, pain and heartache feel like it will last forever, in reality life is but a vapor in the wind, a wave tossed in the ocean…
Here today and gone tomorrow…
Thanksgiving 2011
The following year Thanksgiving 2011 was one of the most untraditional I remember, most of our stuff at that point was in storage as we had been packing and preparing to make our way to what would later become Grace Ranch Ministries here in East Texas. I remember we were sitting on the parking lot of that mini storage in Seymour Missouri loading the 30ft car hauler trailer that was connected to our 40ft Prevost bus…
(And I’ll admit even though I was excited about the move as I’d wanted to live in Texas since I was a little boy having grown up watching Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris being my childhood tv role model who I later met in person October of 2014!)
It was difficult, because if ANYONE knows me at all they KNOW that I am ALL about the food and the family kitchen table and gathering around it and sharing a wholesome meal together. It was already a difficult enough year as it was having to deal with the backstabbing pain of betrayal and desertion from one’s own mother.
Improvise – Adapt – Overcome
So not being able to have that big traditional Thanksgiving dinner was a little hard to accept but it was just another instance where we ALL had to learn how to improvise, adapt and OVERCOME… I remember thinking the local McDonald’s was opened that day. (This is a small southern town mind you that to my knowledge has only had VERY minor changes in the last decade and a half since we lived there much less way back then.)
That being said McDonald’s was NOT open… So no Big Mac meal or whatever we had planned to get that day. (If I’m not mistaken we were all pretty obsessed with their angus burgers at the time… ROFL!)
Surprisingly enough me and my uncle drove around and found that our little local supermarket just so happened to be opened, we ran in got some bread, lunch meat, bologna, chips and sodas and made our way back to the mini storage where we all sat down for a little bit in the front quarters of that 1988 Prevost bus and there, in that moment, in that year of 2011 we had our Thanksgiving feast. And I’d say new beginnings, a new home, and having made it as far as we had was certainly MORE than enough for us to be thankful for…
Now…
Fast forward about 8 years later… Just TWO days before Thanksgiving we got the call that my mother had been in a catastrophic car accident on I-30 South as a result of that accident she had suffered a traumatic brain injury and me and my grandma being 4hrs out from the hospital where she eventually ended up we dropped everything and threw whatever we could in a big black travel suitcase and threw it in the back of my little blue 2017 Chevrolet Spark along with some other things, made one stop for fuel in Henderson and didn’t make another stop until we arrived UAMS in Little Rock Arkansas where they had just wheeled my mom into an ER room when we got there.
When me and my grandma left the ranch we didn’t know how long we would stay there or what type of horror awaited us or WHAT might take place, all we could do was have faith and BELIEVE and so that is what we did.
Again that Thanksgiving was not one of being at a traditional family style covered dining table surrounded by family/loved ones, instead it was spent in cold and bleak hospital waiting room with a Thanksgiving plate purchased from the little hospital cafe surrounded by other families and their loved ones who were awaiting whatever horrors that awaited them.. Fortunately for us as believers our God is IN THE WAITING.
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
– Isaiah 40:31
Waiting can be so hard… And far too many have to spend their holidays in the hospitals awaiting most often tragic news but there again that too was only for a season.
We ended up spending Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years there but we made it.. Because life is long but it GOES on and whether we want to or not we MUST go on with it.
We HAVE to…
Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2021…
At this point after having helped my mother recover her injuries she had parted ways with us once again, as well as my sister and my uncle leaving just me and my grandma on the ranch. Two months prior to the holiday in September of 2021 me and my grandma had just survived big rona which literally almost took us BOTH out!
BUT GOD…
This year in particular I was determined to have a good holiday nonetheless… So we invited a dear friend of ours from Waco to come down with us and we celebrated Thanksgiving dinner together where I made a smaller yet traditional Thanksgiving meal for us to enjoy around the table TOGETHER… It went over so well that I thought l I would do the same for Christmas dinner only this time we invited a few more…
It too turned out GREAT…
The last few years me and my grandma have had the honor and privilege to celebrate with our dear friend in Waco as we enjoy a nice meal together at the good old fashioned Golden Corral… Which is where we will be going to celebrate this year as well.
Shoutout to those who work on the holidays regardless of how you feel about the holidays a shout out to you nevertheless because I know it can certainly be a very busy and challenging time but for you we ARE GRATEFUL!
So in conclusion…
Of this long reflection that has taken me about an hour and 40mins of my 2hr walk to write I want to leave you with this… As you gather for the holiday season, whatever time it is, wherever you are, whoever you are and whenever you are, however you celebrate and whatever it is that you may have faced throughout this year of 2025 know that you have faced it, you ARE facing it, hold on to those around that you still have left with all your might, cherish every moment and you WILL make it…
Happy Thanksgiving, God bless and SHALOM…
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