Remember To Give Thanks Every Day

Sat., Nov. 18, 2000

Paul Graves Staff writer

My wife-turnedgrandmother and I returned from Milwaukee on Halloween after a wonderful visit with our granddaughters, 3-year-old Katie and 10-monthold Claire, and their terrific parents. So it’s time for another letter to those incredible young ladies. The focus is Thanksgiving.

My Dear Katie and Claire:

Once again you worked your granddaughter magic on grandma and me. And even while you both struggled with serious cold symptoms! How do you stay so beautiful and precious through coughs, blowing your noses and high fevers?

I’ll give you two clues: No. 1, it’s through the eyes and hearts of your grandparents that you stay beautiful and precious, regardless of what is happening in your lives on any given day. Clue No. 2, you stay beautiful and precious in your daddy’s and mommy’s eyes and hearts, too, even when your behavior is cranky, even infuriating (a word you will learn by the time you are teenagers).

It appears I brought your cold symptoms back with me, and they put me into a many-day funk. But I hold to the wonderfully comforting thought that my discomfort was worth it, because it came out of the act of loving you and being loved by you for four days. You are worth so very much to your grandmother and me, as well as to your grandparents in Mexico.

Your parents will save this letter and the others I write to you as part of my legacy to you both. By the time you can both read this particular letter, you will have enjoyed many Thanksgiving Days with your mommy and daddy, maybe even with grandparents on occasion, and hopefully with some of your friends.

You will have learned something about how Thanksgiving began in our country as a feast between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans in 1621. You will probably have already taken part in a school play about that first Thanksgiving. If not, don’t volunteer to be the turkey!

Thanksgiving Day has become a special time for many families, including ours. While we can’t be in Milwaukee with you for Thanksgiving, we will be with you in our hearts. We know that you and your mommy and daddy will have a special meal. Of course at 10 months, Claire, you won’t be chewing on a turkey drumstick. But your big sister Katie might be.

This meal is meant to remind you to be thankful for all the wonderful people in your lives who love you and are thankful you are alive. Like your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, your friends and so many others who love you so much.

But as important as it is for you to remember these people, it is even more important that you remember who made all of this love possible: God.

You will learn more and more about God from your parents, from your time in Sunday school and in worship, plus in many other ways. You will go through times when you are sure you know everything there is to know about God, because you and God will be on very personal speaking terms. There will also be times when you realize you don’t know God very well at all. God may even seem too far away to be real.

But God is real, Katie and Claire. You see, God is so gigantic and so mysterious that we will never fully know all there is to know about God. I hope you will enjoy that mystery every day that you live!

More than likely, however, you will find times when you don’t want to even talk to God, let alone listen to God. The whole idea of God may become difficult for you and discouraging to you. You may even have times when you think God has run away from you!

But that won’t be true! It will be exactly in those times when you are most discouraged that I want you to remember this: God will never run away from you. You may run from God in a million different ways, but God will always love you and be as near to you as your very breath.

My precious granddaughers, it is always easy to be thankful to God when you believe life is very good and you have people around you who love you so deeply. It is much, much harder to give thanks to God when you are very sad or afraid.

But it is exactly in those times when I want you to remember to be thankful that God is cheering you on, is loving you when you can’t love yourself. When you are feeling most alone, when even daddy and mommy can’t find the right words or actions to show their deepest love for you, I want you to remember that God really does love you!

In fact, Katie and Claire, God uses your loving parents, grandparents, teachers, friends and kind strangers to remind you of her love for you. So you see, when you are thankful for their love, you remind yourself that God loves you so very much, also.

This love and thanksgiving does not happen just on Thanksgiving Day. It’s only one day our country chooses to celebrate all of the wonderful things and people that fill our lives. We must remember to be thankful every day, my dear young ladies. For God is with us every moment of every day. Even when we forget to be thankful.

With loving thanks for both of you! Grandpa Graves

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