This year, Thanksgiving feels different.
The table may be set with the familiar bounty of fried turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry orange relish, but I can’t help but notice the weight of what lies behind this day — of the challenges and the struggles that have marked the months leading up to it. It’s been a year full of difficulties, of moments when hope felt thin, and yet, Thanksgiving arrives, as it always does, with an invitation to stop, breathe, and give thanks.
There’s a tension this year between the heaviness of hardship and the lightness of gratitude. I don’t want to diminish the reality of the pain or the struggle, for those things are real and raw for so many of us. But Thanksgiving, when approached with a heart open to the insights of gratitude, has the power to reveal the quiet beauty in the midst of it all. I’ve come to recognize that gratitude isn’t just about acknowledging the good, the easy and the comfortable; it’s about finding God’s grace in the hard places, too.
As we gather around the table, I find myself reflecting on the things that have held us together through a difficult year. It wasn’t the perfect days that brought us closer, but the imperfect ones — the days when we didn’t have the energy to pretend, when we had to rely on each other in ways we hadn’t previously. Those were the moments that deepened the bonds of our family. It wasn’t the glossy picture of life that we’ve shared on social media, but the quiet, unspoken moments that revealed the beauty of our connections. The way my husband worked long hours on a project with a grown child or how my girls knit a bond of their own while writing a play up in their attic bedroom.
Gratitude doesn’t demand that we have everything together. In fact, it often grows in the cracks, in the spaces where things fall apart. It’s in those gaps that we find the tender mercies of a faithful God who meets us in our brokenness and makes us whole again. This year, I find myself thankful for the lessons learned in the hardest places — the lessons in patience, in surrender, in trusting that tomorrow will hold grace enough, even when yesterday was too much to bear.
As I contemplate the faces that will gather around our table over the course of the weekend — family, friends, the people who’ve walked with us through both the high and low moments of this year — I am filled with a quiet gratitude. They are here. We are here. That’s enough. Even in the gaps, even when there are people we will miss, there is a sense that we are still us, and it is good.
There’s also a recognition that gratitude isn’t just a feeling, but a choice. To give thanks is an active decision, a habit to cultivate. It’s easy to be thankful when life is flowing smoothly, but it’s in the struggle, in the pain, that thanksgiving becomes a discipline. Choosing to give thanks when things are hard doesn’t ignore the sorrow, but it reframes it. It helps us see that even in the darkest days, there are moments of light, of beauty, of grace.
So, this Thanksgiving, I give thanks — not in spite of the hard year, but because of it. I give thanks for the growth it has brought, the ways it has first challenged, and then deepened my faith, and the reminders it has offered about the things that truly matter. The moments of joy are sweeter because they’ve been hard-earned. The love feels deeper because it’s been tested. And the grace? It feels all the more precious because I’ve seen it in the places I least expected.
Thanksgiving, after all, is about more than just a meal or a tradition. It’s about the choice to look for God’s goodness in every season — whether easy or difficult — and to rest in the knowledge that he is always present, always faithful and always worthy of our thanks.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
