COVID-19 restrictions got you down? Make every day a Thanksgiving celebration.

The coronavirus has wreaked all manner of havoc in 2020.

To me, not the greatest, but certainly not the least, of its depredations is that we’ve had to cancel our Prather family Thanksgiving celebration.

My wife Liz’s family has also canceled its Thanksgiving gathering.

This stinks, plain and simple. Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite holiday. I love everything about it. Liz and I host my family’s annual meal, as I’m now somehow the patriarch of the clan.

I love having all my kin gathered under our roof. I love turkey. I love pumpkin pie. I love seeing my grandkids and their cousins playing together. I love watching football with the guys. I love the inside jokes at one another’s expense. I love that it’s a holiday not centered on buying and exchanging unneeded, ill-fitting gifts. I love reminiscing about family members who are no longer among us. I even love the pre-meal prayer.

I look forward to Thanksgiving all year.

When we agreed it wouldn’t be wise to get together this November, given that our state is in a Covid-19 surge and family gatherings rank among the top spreaders, I fell into what my late dad used to call the mulligrubs. In other words, a funk.

Not much else this year has gotten me down—but no Thanksgiving? That did it.

Then I had an odd experience. As I went along quietly fuming to myself about losing my favorite holiday and mourning all I was going to miss, I started hearing a Bible verse playing in my head, like an earwig whose melody gets stuck in your brain.

“In everything give thanks,” it said. “In everything give thanks.”

Over and over. In a loop. Whether this was my own voice or the Spirit’s, who can say. But gradually it got to me.

I started thinking about the elements of the holiday for which I could still be grateful.

I forced myself through gritted teeth to thank God that Liz and I could bake a turkey and mash potatoes for ourselves anyway.

Then we decided to prepare dinner for the whole family and just deliver it to their home doorsteps. At least we’d get to see them, if only from their stoops. I thanked God for that inspiration.

I thanked God we have reliable cars with which to deliver the meals. I thanked God I’m part of a family I actually want to see, that there’s no one I loathe or fear or dodge. I thanked God we were able to agree not to have our dinner and didn’t fight about it.

I thanked God that next year Thanksgiving probably will be back to normal and the chances are good I’ll be around to celebrate it.

This kind of upbeat attitude doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m no Pollyanna.

As I’ve said often, I’m by nature the kind of guy who can find the dark lining in any silver cloud. If somebody says, “Wow, isn’t it a beautiful day,” my first thought usually is, “Yeah, but it’s raining somewhere.”

So, for me, giving thanks even in unhappy situations requires effort. I have to keep reminding myself to look on the bright side, to find something positive, to offer up praises regardless of whether things are going my way.

But maybe it’s because this is something I have to mindfully reapply myself to again and again that I can testify how well it works.

The cancellation of our Thanksgiving dinner threw me into a funk. I found that being thankful anyway, and giving intentional voice to that thankfulness, brought me right back up. Quickly. The more I thanked God for all the good, the better I felt.

Try it and you’ll see. It’s hard to be despondent and thankful at the same time. The more you look for the positive and the more you praise the Lord for his blessings, the airier your burdens become. I don’t know exactly how it works, I just know it does.

If you’ve lost your job, thank God you still have your health. If your health’s not the greatest, either, give thanks that you’ve got a devoted spouse who’ll look after you. If you don’t have a spouse, thank God you’ve got the liberty that comes from being independent. There’s almost always something for which we can be grateful.

In fact, we don’t have to enjoy Thanksgiving just once a year. If we choose, we can make every day our thanksgiving

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published November 19, 2020 at 2:42 PM with the headline "COVID-19 restrictions got you down? Make every day a Thanksgiving celebration.."