(1954 photo of Mom, Dad, me, Mona, & Peter ... Beattie was in CA with her family.)
I have been preoccupied lately with thoughts of my parents and two sisters. Many people hate certain holidays because they mark the passing of loved ones, and the pain is too great. If that were true, I would despise Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and my birthday celebrations. However, I now mark these same holidays as special moments to remember. Dad died shortly after New Year’s Day of 1982. Mona died shortly before Thanksgiving of 1999, Mom died 9 days before Christmas of 2006, and Beattie died in August of 2007, about one month after my birthday. I miss each of them, regardless of how long ago they died. But I refuse to allow missing them mar my Giving Thanks for their influence in my life!
Thanksgiving was always Mona’s favorite holiday, which I recall each Thanksgiving. One year, Sunday, November 22 marked a special reading in Disciplines (Upper Room devotional). I had shared it with Mona because of two sentences: “You showed me that at the center of the universe is not blind fate but a heart of love.” and ending with, “Enable me to refer to you my every concern and to offer you my every action so that loving you will be my deepest motive and serving you the ultimate objective in all that I do.” Those statements personified her life then, and create joy in mine each year.
That was the week of Mona’s last Thanksgiving. Her funeral was just prior to the holiday, on Monday, Nov. 22, 1999. But that reading had so impacted me that I kept it, inserting it into each successive Disciplines book for the following year. Eacy November 22 I read it anew, and thank God for my sister. I re-read it this morning.
Thursday, November 22, 2007 marked the day of both Mom’s and Beattie’s first Thanksgiving in Heaven. Re-reading the Disciplines quote gave me yet another smile of memory.
This morning’s reading from the Disciplines for 2012, I find: “We give thanks for the double harvest” of both physical and spiritual food, plenteous to all.” I find my double harvest overflows in heart and mind, in life itself.
Happy Thanksgiving, no matter WHAT your circumstances may be!!
I thank my God for you, every time I think of you!
