Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Thanksgiving...A Year Later

It was just about this time last year that I received one-of-those-phone-calls- you-never-want-to-get from my daughter. My five-year-old grandson was in the hospital. He was behaving very strangely and they were running tests. One of those tests was on his head...his brain. In a flash, I was in the car headed up I-95 as fast as the law would allow.

That was Monday before Thanksgiving. My other daughter and her family made the same kind of hurried trip from their home in Tennessee. My husband stayed behind rather than leave his mother alone at holiday time.

The next three days are just a blur. We were in and out of the hospital room, waiting for tests and fearing results. Our phones kept us connected. Finally, on Wednesday morning, we got the final results. Everything was fine...except his ears. Our little guy's strange behaviors were the result of a profound hearing loss. One ear is totally down, never to return. The other is down about half. Their only explanation: a possible virus that went undetected.

Compared to the visions of awfulness that had danced in my head, this news gave us all a sigh of relief. Of course, there were tears at first, especially from his mother. But by Wednesday evening, we were picking ourselves up and thanking God for his otherwise good health.

This year our family has learned about pediatric hearing aids and the ways the public school system works with hearing challenged children. And our little boy is learning to handle his own paraphernalia, which now includes glasses. And he is a pure joy...a first-grader on the A-B honor roll.

Like every family in the world, ours constantly has its on-going challenges and concerns. Some of them are very heavy this Thanksgiving. But compared to my fears as I raced up the interstate that Monday a year ago, we are okay. We can say with assurance that God is good...better than we deserve.

From the pen of Ann Voskamp, we hear it this way:

So the deal is, God? We aren’t about to let anything steal our thanksgiving.
We aren’t letting hard times steal our thanksgiving.
We aren’t letting hard sells steal our thanksgiving.
We aren’t letting hard knocks steal our thanksgiving.
Because all of us folks down in the trenches know it:
If you let something steal your thanksgiving…
You let something steal your joy.
And if you let something steal your joy?
You let something steal your strength.

So today, in the midst of our Big Things, our Ugly Things, our Hard Things, in the midst of ALL Things,

We give thanks to You, God – not because of how we feel but simply because of Who. You. Are.

We’re on it, O Beautiful Lord and Giver of All – the one thing we must pray to be great at is thanksgiving – because it’s the one thing that makes You, God, great in our lives.