365 Days of Turkey and Dressing
By Sally Bishai (11/23/06)
Before I begin, I’d like to apologise for being a sell-out and calling the heavenly and carb-filled concoction in the title “dressing” rather than “stuffing,” which I would normally never do. Having first called today’s jaunt “365 Days of Turkey and Stuffing,” however, I realised just how uncomfortable it sounded (for either food-enthusiast or turkey, actually) and settled for what you see before you, three or so inches up.
On to the topic of today’s story, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine called Lita. Lita is a strong, beautiful and intelligent young lady I have gotten to know in the past few years. She is successful in both her personal and occupational life, and has accomplished rather a lot for someone of her young age. Lita is also the biggest train-wreck I have ever seen in my life.
A year ago, I would have been pleased to tell you that I deserved the title of “Miss Calamity, 2006,” but Lita’s got me beat. Where I draw one or two disasters to me every week, she manages to have several crises track her down every day!
Drunk drivers regularly (at least thrice yearly) slam into her wheels. Doctors are always finding odd levels in her bloodwork, lumps in strange places, and unexplained comings and goings of disease after disease after disease. And if a potted plant is scheduled to fall from a third-story window in any given town, it’s usually Lita’s forehead that bears a bruise for the following week.
I can’t say whether she has “bad karma” or just happens to be remarkably klutzy and ungraceful, but I can tell you that she has never once complained about any adversity (or infirmity) that I’ve seen her go through. (Although she could just be bottling it up..)
This is quite a stark contrast to the people at school or Wal-Mart or in the mirror, actually, who are constantly going on about how “it’s not fair!” or how “I don’t deserve this!”
The people who feel entitled to having things go their way, and who get cross with God when one or 15 things have gone “wrong.”
Or the people who might not get cross with God, but who ask Him “Why did You do this??” (as though they had every right in the world to question the person who not only created that world, but made them and the entire human race) or why He had the nerve to take a loved one or “make” people crash their cars or even allow them to get a B on their Statistics tests.
God is not a fair-weather friend to us, so we haven’t the right to be fair-weather friends to Him—much less question His decisions!
Furthermore, it is so kind of our dear Creator to give us life that even in what we consider the “worst case scenario” we actually have so much to be grateful for. If we had no place to live and only one set of clothing, we would still have tons to be grateful for. We’re alive, aren’t we? God gave us the chance to know Him, didn’t He? In my book, that’s more than enough, and all the rest—money, love, success, a roof over our heads.. it’s all “gravy,” as we say in the South, and “El kwayess zay el wehesh,” (“The good is like the bad”) as we say in Arabic, because if God willed it or allowed it, then it must serve a purpose in His plan, and His plan is good (by virtue of having come from Him) and thus CAN’T be bad, even if we might not be having a field day during certain times in His plan. It all goes back to the whole “God never promised us ‘smooth sailing,’ only that He’d be with us no matter what.” For example, I may not be overjoyed to get a blood test, but I know that it needs to be done if I care about finding out my cholesterol or whatever, and the doctor’s friendly smile might make the ‘ouch’ experience that much easier to take.
And it’s true. Ask Lita, who was fired from her job and found out she had a birth defect that predisposed her to a disease whose strenuous, expensive and time-consuming treatment made her significant other leave her this past month.
Will she be pasting on a fake smile when it’s her turn to raise a glass (of water) at Thanksgiving Dinner? Not at all. Furthermore, I have a feeling that she raises a toast to God at every meal, thanking Him for all the things she DOES have. We would do well to emulate her, don’t you think?
The point in all this is that we always have *something* to be grateful for, and it wouldn’t hurt us to remember it. So I guess you could say that we should forget the notion of Thanksgiving being on a Thursday in November and make EVERY day Thanksgiving!
(We shouldn’t, however, institute green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and, erm, “dressing” in our daily thanks, or else we may find ourselves “thanking” God for our rapidly-expanding waistline..)
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