Thankful Hearts Are Tied to Trust
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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Thanksgiving & Contentment
38 articles gathered under this theme.
What If You Don’t Feel Like Giving Thanks?
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NKJV) Last weekend I picked up my grandson’s big fat backpack to throw over my should...
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Thanking God For All I See
“Thank you for the sghetti,” the little voice said. My daughter’s hands, folded in prayer sat against the edge of the kitchen table. Those first prayers were so pure and yet so very contr...
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Is Your Accent On the Right Thing?
When we moved into a tiny Italian village, we gained immediate notoriety as, The American Family. In fact, we were the only Americans in the area. We were an anomaly. I could feel the ten...
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What Is God Teaching You?
“What’s God been teaching you through His Word?” I ask as we settle in, past the mundane of life. We’ve left behind kids, jobs, routines, and the cycle of activities that spin our lives....
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God is Good Regardless
“Oh Mom. God would be good if there was cancer,” she replied, sitting against the metal slatted headboard of the hospital bed. Her voice held that daughter to mother tone of reproof, and...
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What Is Your Heart Carrying Into the Holiday Season?
I love the Holidays. Always have. Hopefully always will. Yet, as seasons pass, new challenges arise and I find at times a sense of melancholy seeps into this time of year. I recognize how...
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We’ve Got Each Other
“Was it Ross?” “No that’s not right,” he shook his head. “Richard?” “Maybe we ought to take some of that stuff they advertise on T.V.,” my husband mused when both of us together couldn’t...
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What does satisfaction look like to you?
“That was so satisfying,” my grandson said. Surprised, I wondered, “Where did that came from?” He had just fished out a slippery shard of thin ice from a puddle. It lay shattered like gla...
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Look Beyond Your Own Table
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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How Prepared Are You?
Black Friday, get-all-you-can-day, comes directly after be-Thankful-for-what-you-have-Day. Ironically paradoxical isn’t it? After feeding on bounty and gratefulness we rise from our fatte...
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Chosen Isn’t So Special if You Are a Turkey
My kids used to say I should write a how-to-hide-the-turkey-recipe book. We ate a lot of turkey when we lived in Italy. Affordable and easily available, I disguised wings, thighs and brea...
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Measure Your Heart of Thanksgiving
“We will be measuring your daughter for a wheel chair at 3:00 this afternoon,” the nurse told me with a cheerful smile on her face. Befuddled images traced vellum pages on my mind. A brid...
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Whatever State You are In Today
Whatever State You are In Today “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.” Philippians 4:11 NKJV So what state did you wake up in? Red...
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I Fell in Love with American Thanksgiving While Living In Another Country
I learned to really appreciate this American tradition in a place where it was not celebrated. Our first years we felt alone without family. We joined with fellow North Americans, friends...
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Thanksgiving Transforms Hearts
As we enter the season of thanksgiving, I love the emphasis on remembering, being aware of the little things, the falling leaves, slivers of sunshine and raindrops of life. We talk of the...
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How To Know Right from Wrong
We went to Italy back in our young days knowing my husband might have an advantage in language and culture. He grew up as a missionary kid in Ecuador. I grew up a farmer’s kid in Kansas....
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My Life Has Not Turned Out the Way I Expected
A year ago, before the shadow of Covid darkened our skies, my daughter wrote a guest post. As we look for the light at the end of the 2020 tunnel, it relates to our lives now even more. T...
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No Thank You
I’ve written before about my hatred for goats, but somehow this year, it seems appropriate to revisit that dislike. No Thank You I hated goats. Dorothy hated being milked. She was an ugly...
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Have We Lost Thanksgiving?
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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A Perfect Tree and Its Reminder to Be Thankful
This week when I was out walking, I saw a perfect tree. I paused to look up and appreciate the sway in the wind, its colors moving in and out of sunlight, its form and height. Under its o...
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Whatever Makes Them Happy Isn't the Answer
“The things I do for my kids,” I thought with a half-eaten Big Mac in one gloved hand and piece of wilted lettuce in the other. “But this tops them all.” I stood on a stool leaning into a...
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What if the Light at the End of the Tunnel is Just More Tunnel?
-Guest post by Charity George Too often I wait till I’ve reached the light at the end of the tunnel, to be thankful. “Thank you that those test results turned out good.” “Thank you that t...
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How to Kill a Thankful Heart
I did it again. I took out my measuring tape and measured. It wasn’t the dainty kind I carry in my purse and embarrass my husband with, or the big black one pocketed in his tool belt hang...
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My Mom, a Bar of Soap and Clean Talk
My parents weren’t really the “let the consequences teach her” kind of people. They were more the “let’s give her some consequences” types. But since I could always count on what my actio...
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It is Good to Give Thanks
“I’ll still be here,” he whispered as he climbed back into bed next to me. The sun still slept outside the dark window. Chill replaced the warmth of good-bye hugs, of little arms around m...
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The No. 1 Way to Resolve Your Insecurities
Sometimes I’m Leah and sometimes I’m Rachel. Sometimes I soar confidently, secure in my position and exhilarated by life. Sometimes I sink in a mire of insecurity and doubt. Sometimes I f...
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4 Days to Christmas: VINE
I used to stuff little arms into sleeves like a turkey at Thanksgiving. But somewhere between the years of babies and grand babies, the art went south. I’m all thumbs, trying to capture s...
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Losing Thanksgiving
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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Thanksgiving Despite Unhappy Circumstances
Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free...
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Thanks for your tip driver
My husband and I get a kick out of mistranslations, written instructions or explanations into English from another language. Perhaps it's because we have been on the other side. Language...
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Leftover Thanksgiving
“I’ll still be here,” he whispered as he climbed back into bed next to me. The sun still slept outside the dark window. Chill replaced the warmth of good-bye hugs, of little arms around m...
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Sfoons, forks and miracles
“Thank you for the sghetti,” my daughter prayed. Her little fingers entwined into a ball were folded against the edge of the kitchen table. Her forehead puckered and her eyes squinted. Th...
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Can thankfulness really be commanded?
Can thankfulness really be commanded? “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thess. 5:18 (NASB) Well, yes, apparently it can. It is the season of g...
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Growing Golden Gracefully
Have you ever wondered if someday you would be like the elderly person in front of you at the cash register? I wrote an article that appeared in an issue of Just Between Us about living a...
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I Can't Do This
There’s a whisper in my ear. “I can’t do this,” it says. I’ve heard that voice all my life. Sometimes it speaks softly, sometimes it hisses, and sometimes it shouts. In the first days of...
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The Great Commission Still Beckons
My husband grew up the pale-skinned blond boy in a black and white background of Ecuador. A child of missionaries, he biked deserted dirt roads, rode in airplanes and ate iguana. Immune t...
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When Thanksgiving Doesn’t Come
Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free...
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