Thanksgiving in the slow lane

What's Thanksgiving without family?

Quiet.

Hubby got slated to work the whole four-day weekend, and the only family we have within a few-hour radius left the state for the holiday, so it's just us.  SweetPea and I are having a very quiet--and restful!--holiday weekend.    And you know what?  This year I don't mind.  The weeks have been so full for so long, that it was actually euphoric to think that we could just kick back for four days, without schedule and demand, and catch up.

We did the traditional meal thing yesterday, eating late when Dad came home, and watched an old movie by a crackling fire.  Today I tackled some major mess in the basement and made significant progress--there's now room to wrap Christmas presents.  (Groan.  Don't you feel like you're hurtling to the next holiday at warp speed?)  This afternoon SweetPea and I got a two-hour start on the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, a garage-sale find with four hours left to go.  Very fun.

Tonight I took Doug Phillips' idea from his Vision Forum email and read out loud Chapter 4 of William Bradford's "Plymoth Plantation" at the dinner table.  This chapter tells of why the Pilgrims felt compelled to leave Leyden, Holland and come to America.  Interesting that a primary reason was that they were losing their children to the culture, watching them walk away from God and family.  Sound familiar?  They faced grim alternatives to stay or go, but I love what they based their ultimate decision on:

"...all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.  It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible.  For though there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain; it might be sundry of the things feared might never befall; others by provident care and the use of good means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne, or overcome."  (modern spelling my change)

A bracing word for us parents today, wouldn't you say?  The challenges of raising children in a culture opposed to the things of God require this same gutsy faith in Lord.  I pray I will have "answerable courage."