We had Thanksgiving dinner today, and man it was a doozy! A whole turkey, a ham, and a big pan of cornbread dressing to go with it. There was two cakes, chocolate and carrot cake (that one is my favorite, carrot cake). To top all that off we had two kinds of sweet tea this time, peach and regular. I ate until I could slam bust. Then we had homemade vanilla ice cream from the churn.

Grover Sessuls came by like he does every year and brought a big slab of brisket and a tub of venison jerkey. Mamaw got to talking after we were all full and could not move, and said she wanted to say her piece this year. We were all glad too; ain’t no tv allowed in the house; Uncle Muddy generally goes to his radio shack and watches his little tv for ball games and such. Somebody needed to start saying something and this Thanksgiving it was Mamaw.

“Boys, I want to let y’all and everyone else in this room know something, that I love every single one of you in here gathered to give thanks to the Almighty. I think we all need to take a few minutes of reflecting; I wanted to let y’all know what I have been convicted by lately. I believe as we go through our days, be it work or school, church or market, field or kitchen we all got some kind of bounty to be thankful for.”

She went on, “We often find ourselves tending to murmur and grumble, when the devil in this life tries to throw a hindrance to us, and our humble plans. But we can be grateful of the assurance of Jesus and Him alone in our right standing with the Almighty. We have a heavenly home to attend once we expire, or the Last Trump of God sounds that day.”

“There ain’t a single one of us a-sittin’ in this room that has ever gone hungry, without basic needs, without clean water or shoes and clothes to wear. We have enough left over most times to bless those poor less fortunate souls around us as well. But we don’t want to boast that we can tear down our barns and build bigger barns neither.” she said.

“God hates a hateful heart and a prideful look, and we don’t supposed to conduct ourselves in that fashion.” she continued as Uncle Muddy raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing. “I just wanted to remind us all of what goodness and mercy we all have here in this room, and I don’t want anyone under the sound of my voice, a sitting here before God and the Cloud of Witnesses to be ignorant of the fact of just how good we got it.”

A murmur of agreement went around Mamaw’s living room, as we all were reflecting like she asked us to, and for once Uncle Muddy didn’t have a smart aleck comment. He was looking thankful, and everybody else too. Man I love the holidays; sometimes I wish we could have a holiday every month!

Happy Thanksgiving y’all. I think I am gonna go and sit a spell at the pond, and reflect with the fish.