i haven’t posted in a while because i have been working way too much and my job has been preoccupying every spare moment of my waking and sleeping hours. when you start dreaming about work, you know you are in trouble. yesterday was thankgiving and i didn’t have any plans since i don’t have family in the area so i had premeditated a day of netflix and leftovers. but at the last minute i was invited to have dinner with a friend from church and his family. i debated my options and in spite of my introvert-self, I opted in on hanging out with a group of strangers (yes, if you’ve ever met me this is shocking). so i determined to break out of my recluse tendencies to be social and celebrate the day.
thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. it is only a holiday in the states but when you consider the idea of taking a moment to be thankful for all that you have, you realize (or should realize) it really makes sense. i know that it is so easy for me to forget just how much i have, how blessed i am. i can so easily focus on the how much trouble my job is causing me or some other challenge in my life, when in fact god has blessed me with more than i deserve or realize. i wonder what it would be like if we had many days of thanksgiving, not just one day year. i wonder how different we would be if we were really thankful for what we had instead of spending so much energy focusing on the difficulties in our life or what we think we deserve. i wonder if our relationships would be different, better, both with ourself and each other if we changed our perspective just a little and were thankful.
in the spirit of thankfulness, i headed to my friend’s house for dinner. there was quite a group – turned out to be 12 in all, wow! i think that all holidays are best celebrated with children and his two nieces were there, they are adorable. i rarely get to celebrate holidays with children since i live so far away from my family and because i have only a few young cousins that i don’t actually see very often even when i am home. the house was filled with people that made me feel incredibly stupid. with conversations from math to physics, anatomy and physiology and more, i felt like a high school drop out among phds. during casual conversation, his sister solved a 4x rubik’s cube and reminded us that it’s just a matter of simple mathematical patterns (right, that’s what i was thinking all along).
but feeling like the invited dunce wasn’t so bad when you balance it out with the laughs i enjoyed around the kitchen chaos and family stories. i actually felt right at home with that little bit of chaos around the house, everyone running here and there, sometimes not sure which way is up, but nearly sure it’s all going to come together in the end. the only thing missing was the arguing i’m accustomed to at the traditional holiday meal and well, to be perfectly honest, i was ok with that. a holiday without a fight is….something to be thankful for.
but nothing is without it’s, let’s say interesting moments. i’m not accustomed to, nor do i desire to become accustomed to people i’ve never met touching my hair….repeatedly. maybe it’s just those introvert, antisocial tendencies popping back up, but i don’t know. and most people who know me know that i’d be happy to talk to them about what i believe about god, but with people you’ve never met, “religion” never seems like a good topic for discussion. there are always motives behind their asking that i can’t figure out and i think it’s best to slip past that topic until the conversation can be had in the context of a relationship/friendship. but, there it came, five minutes after walking in the door, and again, and again. i was a bit puzzled by the repeated questions about church and i kept deflecting them. unfortunately for my friend who came with me, she caught a couple of the deflections (so sorry, not my intention) but some of our dinner acquaintences seemed satisfied with the non-substantive answers. and this only goes to prove my point, that there is some motive behind the questions other than wanting to really know the answers to the questions being asked. did i mention that i stink that these games and don’t want to play?
but in the end i have to say, i was reminded again how thankful i am. thankful for friends to spend great times like this with. thankful for family who i love even though they are far away. thankful that god has blessed me with more than i could have asked for or imagined.
