I guess most of us will be celebrating Thanksgiving in different ways this year, given the spike in corona virus cases across the country.
Our family is not planning the large all-family get-together that we commonly have celebrated during the past dozen or so years. We'll keep in touch in various ways, but will not getting together for the big Thanksgiving meal that we normally have. For several years now we have kind of combined the celebration of Thanksgiving and Christmas, since our son Jeff and his wife Mary can only make one trip for the season. They live in the middle of Iowa, and have a large family in that area, so they share the seasonal celebrations with a many households. Our daughter Jennifer and her husband Bill Caldwell live here at Pea Ridge now, so we see them more often and often have meals together. Our granddaughters have migrated to far-a-way places like Paragould, Ark., and western Utah, so we'll miss seeing them this time. We're thankful for them, even though it may be a while before we can get together to see them face to face.
I began thinking more about Thanksgivings when we were living in Iowa years ago. That was back when our children were quite young, and when I was still in graduate school. We had moved to Kansas City, Mo., after I graduated from Hendrix College, and I began my studies at St. Paul School of Theology there. Our son Jeff was 4 years old and Jennifer was just under 3.
In mid-1966 we moved to the small town of Tingley, Iowa, in southern part of that state, and I became pastor of three Methodist churches in Ringgold County, Iowa -- Wishard Chapel, Ellston and Tingley. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there, learning about new rural areas and coming to love the people there.
One of the things I noticed right away was the different accents as the people talked. They spoke mid-western English, whereas we were accustomed to Ozark English and the other dialects that one hears in parts of Arkansas. For example, when the Iowans said the word "think," their "i" sound was like the sound of the "i" in "pink." On the other hand, the "i" sound in our Arkansas word "think" was more spread out, as though we spelled the word with more letters -- like "thaink." In Ozark, some one-syllable words were almost spoken in two syllables. Our "thaink" was almost like "thay-ink." The thought came to me as I was thinking about Thanksgiving that year that our word "thaink" sounded a great deal like "thank." So, when I came to preach at our Thanksgiving Sunday service, I preached on "Thinking Thankfully," and as part of the discussion I kind of gave my Iowa congregations a lesson on how to talk in the Ozark language as spoken in Arkansas, southern Missouri and Texas.
One of the things I have noticed about Thanksgiving is that you don't have to have a whole lot of things before you can begin being thankful.
One can be thankful even in response to small blessings. For example, if someone passes on a compliment, you can be grateful for that and can respond with a "Thank You"! Likewise, related to that thought, I have noticed that people who live thankfully are often people who have less than other people who have much but seem never to be thankful. My observation includes the thought that it's not how many blessings you have, but more about how much you appreciate the blessings you have.
Then there is the tie with personal happiness. Thankfulness and happiness seem closely tied together. Happiness is found not so much in the multiplying of possessions, but more in coming to appreciate in a fuller way the blessings large and small that are always discover-able in your experiences.
Another observation about thanksgiving is that once you start noticing your blessings more appreciatively, you are likely to discover that you have more blessings than you initially thought. It seems that if we get caught up in complaining about our misfortunes it makes us blind to our blessings. I always remember the little jingle we used to hear on the "HeeHaw" program on TV -- "Gloom, despair, and agony on me. If I had no bad luck, I'd have no luck at all!"
Well, that's pretty blue, pretty agonizing, pretty dark, even though it was funny. Well, my life has never been all agony and despair. There have always been blessings mixed in with the troubling times. So, another observation -- becoming thankful lies not in avoiding all the sad times in life, but in discovering that the life to be grateful for is a mixture of both fortunate and unfortunate experiences. We can be grateful for the people who live through both the delightful times and the troubled times with us, and find that we are happy together through it all. We can find that the Lord helps us through the hard times, and many of the hard times may be converted into forms of blessing as our life moves ahead.
We can find that our relationship with the Lord and with our family and our friends in faith has the power to transform both the tough times and the amazing times, making them into times of blessing and enrichment.
Happy Thanksgiving! Be Thankful and Be Happy!
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Editor's note: This column was originally published Feb. 20, 2008. Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net , or call 621-1621.