At grandparent’s day, our
granddaughter presented us with a trivet she’d made and decorated with a verse
from Psalm 118. We love seeing it displayed on our stove.
A few days later at church, a
tiny one wheeled up to me blond curls bouncing and held high three pieces of
paper. “These are for you,” she declared.
I felt a smile spreading across
my face as I took the papers. One had various fall foam decorations, one had a pumpkin,
and another (my favorite) had colorful geometric construction paper shapes
representing feathers, which this young artist had arranged around a brown
turkey body.
A fine turkey, indeed. Definitely
refrigerator material.
I’ve been thinking lately of a classic
Thanksgiving children’s story by Lorna Balian, Sometimes it’s Turkey, Sometimes its Feathers.
It’s about a woman who finds a
turkey egg, which she goes to great lengths to facilitate hatching. Then she sacrifices
to help fatten up the turkey, presumably for Thanksgiving dinner, but things
take a sharp left turn and don’t go as planned. In the end (spoiler alert), rather
than eating the turkey, she invites it to dinner. Instead of turkey to eat, she
had, well, you know, feathers.
Now I have to say, that could
definitely happen here. If we found an egg, helped hatch it, and feed it, I’m
pretty sure it would wind up a sitting on a dining room chair instead of lying
on a platter in the center of the table.
In fact, there’s at least one
member of our family who will not be partaking of that big turkey thawing in
the refrigerator. She’ll eat fake dressing made with vegetable broth and skip
the meat all together.
Because sometimes it’s turkey,
and sometimes it’s just feathers here, too.
And it’s feeling like that in
more than one way.
It’s the first Thanksgiving of my
life without my dad. An empty chair this year. I’m trying to be brave, but I
know from experience, these first holidays can be challenging. Every time the
tears start to well, I think of all that he’s left me that continues to bless .
It’s not going to be the same, but somehow we’ll press on.
I’m very thankful for the way God continually reminds
me of the great circle of life through
the precious young ones like our grandchildren and the kids at church, surrounding
me with new life.
Because yes, sometime it’s
turkey, and yet even when it seems like just feathers, God is always there.
Habakkuk knew as he spat the
feathers out of his mouth that no matter what, we offer God praise. He wrote,
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though
the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep
in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will
be joyful in God my Savior.”
Friend, maybe it’s feeling a bit
like just feathers at your house, too, but join me as we choose to rejoice in
all that God has done despite what we may have lost or what we don’t have.
On a lighter note, this year, I
might even take a bite of the fake dressing. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it.