"i invite YOU in": the REALNESS of RAWNESS

My first Thanksgiving home and I am extremely grateful for where I am living. However, this Thanksgiving in particular--back in freedom--has me giving thanks for my past prison living. You see, for the past 4 years, my Thanksgiving was stripped of family, friends, and festivities. It was reduced to a mess-hall style meal, with canned cranberry as the most tasteful portion of the meal. Rubber turkey, watery mashed potatoes, and of course rice--even though it was supposed to be stuffing-- was served with every meal. For example, rice pudding was the dessert and the soup, just add water. In prison, you have to learn to love rice. Because hate it or love it, they are serving it.Anyway, as the traditional layers of Thanksgiving were completely peeled away in those four years, I found the center of this holiday to be rather rewarding.  It was in those imprisoned Thanksgiving’s where I was given an opportunity to be graced by gratefulness. To be thankful in every sense of the word, where thankfulness had nothing to do with the outward activity and everything to do with an inward clarity. I fear such stillness from that time in my life has been strangled by the speed-filled times of this life.  Now it’s all about ‘who is doing what and with whom?’  Crazy how every other day lacks such significance, as we don’t give a second thought as to ‘who is doing what and with whom?’   But because it is a holiday, there is a concerted effort to bring family and friends together—even where some don’t even like each other. You know I’m telling the truth. Sad it is.I refuse to fall into the ritual of  “thankfulness” just because the day is a holiday.  Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely “thankful” to be with my family and my wife and in ‘freedom’ all at the same time.  But, I am most thankful that the rawness of my prison Thanksgivings are embedded in my heart. And such rawness provides a perspective of realness.  I know what it is like to be stripped down to the most essential part of life, without the trimmings, and most importantly without family. And it is that essential part, where I learned the essence of the heart--the place where Jesus desires to call His Home. And when He is at Home in you, you will be at home wherever He places you.  He alone provides my “thankfulness”—in every single day alike.So like Paul wrote in Philippians, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (4:11-13).