Gratitude Changes Everything: A Faith-Based Guide to Thanksgiving

Hi beautiful friends.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve.

I wanted to come on today and share a Thanksgiving message with you because many of us will be very busy tomorrow with a gathering or making a meal or possibly working.

Right?

Not everybody gets off tomorrow and so I just want to come on and share just a blessing and just a few ideas with you that I hope you can take into tomorrow and this weekend.

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Hi, I'm your host Kristen.

I'm an encourager, a faith led entrepreneur, a mom and a wife.

Let's be encouraged in our everyday lives as we let our faith guide us, fuel us and fill us with God's incredible peace, wisdom and joy in our lives.

My wish for each of us is that your day will be filled with thanks and love and gratefulness.

I hope each of us will reawaken to every good thing in our day in our life, and we'll learn to be grateful even for the things that might have annoyed or bothered us before.

And I want to share an excerpt from the book please Sorry and Thanks from Pastor Mark Batterson that I think might help some of us put in perspective gratitude and being thankful.

He says the bottom line, we don't see the world or others as it is.

We see the world as we are.

If you're looking for something to complain about, you'll always find it.

If you're looking for something to give thanks for, you'll always find it.

And your words, be they words of complaint or gratitude, will create your interior world.

And he says the theology of thanks starts with the things that we take for granted.

It's cultivating profound gratitude for the things we overlook or underappreciate.

Okay, I just want to share one idea or exercise that you can do.

And then I also want to share two questions that you can ask yourself that might help you see things a little bit differently on Thanksgiving or any day moving forward.

So the first thing is being that we're in a season of thanks and giving.

I've shared before that I have a gratitude practice and I call it a micro gratitude or thanks practice.

And while I do write down what I'm grateful For sometimes not daily.

But my gratitude practice is basically an ongoing conversation throughout the day, an internal conversation.

I'm not normally saying it aloud most of the time, but I'm just having a conversation as I go throughout my day and giving thanks and being grateful for everything in my life, from the smallest things to the big things.

It's everything from.

And so it's just an ongoing monologue that I have, you know, giving thanks to God or saying, I'm so grateful for this, or I'm so in awe of something, you know, that he's created.

And so that is something where the more you start practicing that, where you're noticing things and then you're giving kind of, you know, just an acknowledgement to God that you're thankful for this thing.

You're grateful for something in your life, or you're just in awe of the beauty of the things he's created and designed.

So I definitely say, try that.

Try your own practice.

Just take this concept and make it your own.

But I'm.

I will say, oh, God, I'm so grateful for this taste.

Like how that soup and all the flavors meld together.

For instance, chicken noodle soup.

I'm very particular about my chicken noodle soups.

I love it with lots of thyme flavor in it and I like smaller chopped up vegetables.

But like, when I have the soup, like, I have hours to simmer it and simmer the broth.

Of course, I buy store broth too, but it's like magic, right?

The flavors come together and I'm like, that's it.

That is the magic.

Like, it tastes exactly how I remember it and I want it to taste.

I'm thankful for that.

Oh my gosh, this is so amazing.

God, like how all these flavors can work together.

And so how did you come up with the different herb flavors of the herbs?

You know, so I'll just continue on.

It might be that I'm just thankful that in the mornings I hear each one of my now adult children, you know, their high school and college age, they've all opened their doors and they're awake.

I'm thankful everyone's awake.

Everyone's hopefully healthy and is here, right?

I don't have to worry, you know, that something happened.

I.

I give thanks and every day in that moment when the last person in my house is moving around.

And so I think the more we're present with our thoughts and the more that we try to shift into being grateful, the more that we start letting go of what's irritating us and frustrating Us and why we're annoyed with our, you know, our sibling or our in law or our auntie or whoever it might be.

And so we have to start doing this and the more we do it, the easier it gets.

But let's say I'm at Thanksgiving and somebody is just kind of going on and on about a topic that I don't agree with.

Well, first of all, I'm usually not going to interject because unless the person's specifically asking me and we're going to have a respectful conversation, but I find that Thanksgiving is not the time or like a big family gathering to have those kind of conversations because most of the time people have different viewpoints and you just don't want to add to the tension.

Right.

There's already a lot of people often coming together and so in that case I would just keep reminding myself things about even the people there.

It's so amazing how my such and such person is made it made time to come today, you know, because maybe they're from out of the area or I'm so impressed that you know, so and so did that or just that they're here and they're trying because maybe they're struggling, you know, maybe it's one of the teenagers or young adults and they're just having a hard time navigating life.

And so for them to show up, it's a lot.

I'm thankful for that, thankful they're there.

And so when we start shifting to a practice of gratitude and giving thanks, it changes what we focus on much like the quote I shared with you by Foster Batterson.

So it actually makes all the difference.

And so I'd recommend that.

And then the questions that I want to mentioned to you, one is it's really like flipping the script.

And I probably talked about this on one of the episodes months ago or last year, but the idea is start asking yourself like what's the thing in that day or in your life or maybe the people that you'll be together with for Thanksgiving or over the holidays, what's the thing that comes up for you like that you're, you know, it's already going to trigger you.

Like you're this one person just annoys you to no end.

Or you're frustrating, frustrated because the same person at work always asks off and then other people can't get off.

So when we have that idea, something that's driving us kind of crazy, frustrating us, we know it's going to be like drive, like just ruin our day tomorrow or whatever.

We just have this thought in our mind.

So what I want you to do is keep that thought in your head about a person or a thing or the stress of the holiday or people aren't appreciative, whatever it is that you're holding onto.

And then I want you to flip the script on, script on that.

Can't.

First of all, ask yourself, is that true or are you making it into something right?

Is it something small or, you know, is it really going to ruin your day or keep you frustrated, or is it something that you can release, you can let go of?

So ask yourself, is there anything I can learn from the situation?

Is there anything I could learn from this person?

Or is there anything I can learn from what this person is going through?

Maybe they are struggling.

Maybe they are super loud and talk about politics.

Maybe they have too many glasses of wine.

I, you know, I don't know, maybe they try to tell how everyone how to do everything right, and it's never the right way.

Their way is better.

Whatever you might be frustrated about that you.

That you experience on Thanksgiving or over the holidays, the question is, can you look at it from a different perspective?

Can you instead find something to be grateful about?

The person, the situation, the loud uncle, whatever it is.

Like, can you find something good in the midst of the thing that frustrates you, irritates you, annoys you, whatever it is?

And I think if we can have more gratitude, be more thankful in that day, and then also start looking at it from a different, refreshed perspective.

Let's stop bringing in our old questions and our old baggage and let's start.

Let's start anew.

Let's start fresh.

Let's say a prayer during the holidays each day, especially on the big days where we're gathering with some people or maybe we're working and there's a lot of people coming in that are struggling, just ask the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, you know, come, Holy Spirit into my day and just pray to have the patience and to have new perspective on whatever it is you will have that you will be up against in your day.

But I think when we do that, and then slow down throughout your day, pause before you speak or pause before you have the thought or, or once you have the thought right, you're irritated about something or you don't want the person to bring up, you know, politics or something.

Ask yourself, in this moment, can I think something different?

Like in this moment, can I think the people that didn't vote the same as me in the election, Whichever way that Was can I stop thinking about them as, you know, ridiculous?

I.

There's a lot of other words I've heard throwing around, unfortunately.

But can we start realizing that maybe the division we feel, maybe the.

All the things are getting spun up aren't actually real?

It's not reality that half or more people think one way and they're all bad or vice versa.

Like, in other words, we have to start realizing that maybe our perception is tainting our own lens and maybe we need to try a new pair of glasses with a different prescription.

Okay.

And so I just want you to really enjoy the day tomorrow.

Remember how the food tastes and it's delicious and that people took the time to prepare the food.

Remember, it's time for connection and fellowship.

And it might be time.

I think there's sports on tomorrow or on.

Yeah, for Thanksgiving.

I don't know because I'm not a big sports fan.

My husband is, though.

Or people watching the parade, you know, put on your favorite music or go for a long walk right before the meal or after the meal, burn off some of that.

All that extra stuff we ate.

Just find time to slow down.

And if you need to take time to separate from a big group, if you're.

You're with a lot of people, go sit on a chair outside, you know, rocking chair.

Or sit in a chair and watch cars go by or the birds flying around.

But just find ways to make sure that you're grounded and you're connected and that you're not just getting frustrated or triggered with the same people and it's the same kind of thing.

And you do something different.

Maybe suggest a little easy game to play with some of the people that you're gathered with.

And if you're by yourself, maybe there's someone nearby you that you know that also is going to be by themselves.

You can always extended invitation or there's a lot of places open that do Thanksgiving meals or just regular meals.

Most.

Lots of restaurants are not closed.

We've done that before.

So there's not one way to celebrate.

And so I just want to say to you, I'm praying that you will have a blessed and safe holiday.

And I just pray that we all give each other a little bit more grace.

And I hope you have a wonderful day.

I hope you have lots of turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie or whatever it is that you do at your own table.

So Happy Thanksgiving from me and my family to yours.

And I hope that when I come back next week, I get to know, you know, that we all had a wonderful day and wonderful meal, or at least wonderful moments.

Also, don't forget, if you're not already on my weekly emails newsletter, jump on it now.

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We're talking over 50% off on some of my offerings, so make sure you're on my email list.

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