by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Here's the hard move...

Here's where our "Thanksgiving" moves from platitude to soul-changing reality...

It's the moment when we look back and find gratitude, even for all the "wrong moves,” and discover that without them we would never be who we are.

No one can force another person to do this. And the simplistic platitudes about "everything happens for a reason" don't help. (imho)

But the reality is this: Without every twist and turn in your road, you would not be who you are today. That includes, every heartbreak...every fork in the road when you declared "wait...this can't be right..."

It includes all the self-induced harm you might have done to yourself in the past.

Pull out one thread of memory and experience, and the whole cloth of your life falls apart.

For many years, I’ve been a fan of the band Poi Dog Pondering, especially the years they were based in Texas.

They have an amazingly deep little pop song, called “Thanksgiving.” It was written by Adam Sultan. But I first heard it at Open Mic’s at the old Poor David's Pub on Greenville from my friend Bill Seely.

You can find a cover of the song I’ve done HERE.

The chorus sums up the whole challenging thought:

“Thanksgiving for every wrong move…that made it right."

As we move through a Season of Gratitude, can you find a gratitude EVEN for the things that went so “wrong?”

You don't have to like them. You especially don’t have to like them while you are going through them! You don't ever have to be happy about them.

But, every time things go "right" in your present-day, that is building on everything else that already happened.

Whatever blessing you have *now* wouldn’t or couldn’t have ever happened without "every wrong move” that came before it.

That’s just how “space-time” works.

I hope you recall that I like to talk about “following your heartbreak.” Finding gratitude, even in the most challenging moments of our life’s history is the final challenging “move” of spiritual maturity. 

I believe it is God who turns our heartbreak into hope.
God doesn't make or intend all those "wrong moves" to happen to intentionally test us.

But bad stuff DOES happen. And God is the creative and healing force in and through all things. The spiritual DNA code of our spirits and souls is such that out of even the worst that ever happens to us...new hope, life, and joy can eventually come.

It's not a "this happens, so that that will happen" situation.

It just....IS.

So, as you tally up your gratitudes this Thanksgiving season, see if you are in a place where you can take this final, challenging step:

"Thanksgiving for every wrong move...that made it right."

That is the final spiritual move that our faith with God helps us to make.