November

How can this month be a month of giving thanks?  A month of joy and fullness?  November, a month that brought silence to a voice that comforted me as a child.  A month that brought emptiness and despair to half of me.  A month too that brings pleasant memories of family gatherings under pecan trees, Gene Deckerhoff on the radio, pecan pies and all things pumpkin. 

 It comes every year without fail, and in its coming there is comfort - the comfort of consistency and routine - that there is something, or rather, Someone who is holding all things together.  The reminder that all shiny things fade and wither and become dust and with this fading there is order and even beauty.  Something to always count on.  The reminder that in the fading and the dust that this isn't the end of the story - there is spring - EVERY year. 

Why am I not more drawn to the spring but more to the fall?  Maybe my autumn tinged hair gives reminder of this time but even more I think it is the picture of HOPE that fills this season of thankful hearts.  A harvest of blessing reaped, a fulfillment of last year's hopes and a looking forward to what might be in the shoots of spring green.  Hope is sometimes all you have in the fading light, in the journey toward making all things right and pure and beautiful.  A certain hope that allows for the peace that comes in truly giving THANKS. 

November - a perfect month to choose to give thanks.  A perfect, full, colorful time to remember to choose to Trust the giver of all gifts, the mixing of spices with pumpkin for pies as with the mixing of joy with pain - a permanent state of our emotions and experience in this life.  Joy with sorrow, the daily - seemingly mundane with the gloriously extraordinary.

 And we move on as pilgrims knowing this is not our ultimate destination -

 November - strangely I look forward to you each year - joy with sorrow and in it ALL I give thanks

"Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.  As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.  They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion."     Psalm 84:5-7

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.  His steadfast love endures forever."  Pslam 136