I stood in the middle of my kitchen staring out at my dining area and living room completely stumped as to how I would rearrange all of the furniture to get dinner seating for forty in what was starting to feel like an extremely claustrophobic space.
For my entire 44-year existence, we have had Thanksgiving dinner with my mom’s side of the family. For years, my mom hosted which meant my Thanksgiving mornings were filled with table setup, last-minute preparations, lots of cooking, a little bit of frantic running around, my dad hiding in the garage, and my brother asleep in his bedroom or at someone else’s house to avoid the preparation chaos.
After my parents suffered a terrible motorcycle accident in 2009 and my mom suffered a TBI, hosting our family of 40 became a bit much for her, and it was passed on to various other family members.
Honestly, I’m not even sure how I ended up volunteering to host this massive event. It was probably my mouth–it tends to get out ahead of my brain at times. However it happened, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I found myself standing in my living room baffled by how I would ever manage to figure this puzzle out.
Year of the creative problem-solving competition, Odyssey of the Mind, came in handy, and I finally figured out how to get my tables set up in an L so that everyone would be seated–maybe not comfortably seated but seated nonetheless.
I pilfered the storage in our basement and pulled out every fall-esque and rustic-looking knick-knack, table cloth, table runner, pumpkin, and candle I could find and set the tables.
Our little cabin in the woods was transformed into a Thanksgiving/Fall extravaganza before the clock struck midnight.
So much had happened in all of our families in the year leading up to that Thanksgiving dinner. There were two weddings, several deaths, a divorce, and a devastating goodbye to loved foster children returned to their biological families.
It was a heavy time emotionally.
As the driveway started to fill up and the counters began to overflow with every traditional Thanksgiving food imaginable, I found myself speechless and overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, connection, and authenticity that filled my home.
When everyone had arrived and shared the amazement that I had puzzle-pieced tables together so that we could all sit together as a family and share this time without even having to banish the kids to the basement, there were a few minutes of silence as we prepared to say grace and begin the feast where everyone got a little emotional.
It was as if we all looked around the room, we took a minute to acknowledge the myriad of emotions, the good times and the terrible times, that we all had experienced during that year. While the good times had been great, the weight of the hard times still seemed to be sitting heavily on all of our shoulders.
Healing happens in so many ways, but often, I’ve found that the place where healing truly happens is around the dinner table. After my uncle prayed a blessing over our overwhelmingly huge Thanksgiving dinner, we made our plates, milled around and chatted, and finally all took our places at that giant L-shaped table.
We ate.
We talked.
We cried.
We laughed.
But, maybe most importantly of all, we also healed.
Thanksgiving isn’t an eat-and-run type of event in my family. It’s a “stay all day” kind of event. There’s enough food for lunch and dinner, enough desserts to feed an army, and enough euchre to fill 6 hours. As this holiday marathon stretched on, it was almost as if you could watch the weight of the year lifting from each person’s shoulders–one person at a time, one tragedy at a time.
Families can be really hard.
They can be filled with drama, debate, judgment, and even hatred.
Thankfully, though, they can also be welcoming places of healing–especially when food is involved.
As you face the holiday season this year, my prayer for you, friends, is that your dinner tables will be places of hope and healing, of love and acceptance, of peace and laughter.
Kristen is a recovering fundamentalist who believes that truth, faith, and the sovereignty of God will survive deconstruction and are absolutely critical components of healthy reconstruction. She loves literary analysis and reading scripture with an analyst’s eye. She lives in rural Ohio with her husband–Russ, daughter–Kate, faithful dog–Lucy, and her grandma’s cat–Butters (that’s a story for another day). When her parents aren’t snowbirds, they join the party in their mother-in-law’s suite, affectionately referred to as Cabin B.
Where to find Kristen…
4 thoughts on “Healing Through Thanksgiving Together”
This is beautiful, Kristen. Thank you for reminding us to keep the main thing the main thing this holiday!
This was a beautiful story, Kristen. May peace and healing and much love flow around all our tables! Happy Thanksgiving!
Kristen. I’m in some physical pain as I heal from an infection. Your beautiful post has tears welling up in my eyes because I may miss Thanksgiving with my family. Thank you for this excellent, heartfelt post. I will be sharing. God bless you and yours this week and beyond.
It is so absolutely true that healing happens at the table. I love to host Thanksgiving (although this year I get the year off!) because there’s something so special about providing space and food and comfort around a table (and a warm fireplace!). 40 people is a LOT! What a blessing you provided to your family and friends!