Thanksgiving.

I’ve always believed that people who start Christmas early are just those who don’t take Thanksgiving seriously enough. I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving, and there are many reasons. I mean…it’s a holiday built around food, right? How can that go wrong? Add football to the mix, and brisk weather, and catching up with family and loved ones—it’s an important holiday to itself. Of course, I have other reasons to love Thanksgiving.

It was during the last week of October 2005 that I was given around two weeks to live. In the first week of November, I underwent apheresis for an adult stem cell transplant, which I received on 07 Nov. Over the course of the next two weeks, I made daily trips to the 10^th floor of Methodist Hospital in San Antonio during the dangerous neutropenic stage, and by the Monday of Thanksgiving week I was released from the hospital—cancer-free. The following Thursday, I ate solid food for the first time in months. I was home, I was alive, and the sun was still coming up every day. Believe me….I was thankful. And that’s a big reason that Thanksgiving is an important holiday for the Mitchells. But it’s not the only reason I’m thankful.

I am thankful for Christ in my life. This side of eternity, I am not perfect, and still daily battle my propensity to be my own man and do my own thing—but because I trust Christ for my salvation, I don’t have to worry about how good or bad I am at following rules (turns out I’m pretty terrible at it). He accomplished my salvation, not me. And when I think of how many times I should have been dead or in prison by now, I am truly thankful that my life has been transformed. Of course, it feels like it could stand some more transformation, but that’s just life this side of eternity. On the other side, He’s already done the heavy lifting.

I’m thankful for the country where I live. Yes, we’ve been told for a generation by our political class that America is a terrible place that has done nothing but terrible things to people. Today’s kids learn the first story of Thanksgiving, and think it’s all about smallpox blankets and evil Republican types raping the pristine native countryside and building great hulking, smoking factories powered by grime-faced children’s labor. It would be nice if they learned the true story: that the first colonists to the New World were faced with horrific hardship, and originally tried to set up a collectivist economic system in which everyone owned the property and chipped in to produce what was necessary for survival. This led to even more extreme hardship (you may easily read all of this in Colonel William Bradford’s diary), after which they decided that private ownership of property might lead to more production—and they were right. Long before Barack Obama told a plumbing contractor on the street that it was time for government to “spread a little of the wealth around,” the 17^th-century colonists had already experimented with such a system, and had dismissed the idea. With a great deal of help from Squanto and his friends, those colonists learned how to plant and cultivate in the New World, and when they extended an invitation to them to share a great meal of Thanksgiving, it was heartfelt. The colonists wanted to give thanks to God for their friends, whom they saw as a blessing. I’m thankful for this moment, and this tradition.

I’m thankful that I got a scholarship to seminary; otherwise I couldn’t have afforded to go. And since I moved my whole family up here for this, that’s kind of a good thing. I’m thankful that I’m involved in church. Church has gotten a bad rap for the last couple of decades, but the Church was Christ’s idea, not Man’s. And in the Church we find fellowship with fellow-laborers. My own church isn’t a big fancy-pants mega-church with a trendy black-framed glasses-wearing, Starbucks-sipping, blogging techno-pastor—but a normal-sized congregation consumed with finding new ways of reaching its community with the gospel. I’m thankful for that.

I’m thankful for my home and job. I didn’t move up here because I felt called to be a contractor, but this job has enabled me to support my family while we pursue God’s call on our lives. That’s a huge blessing, and in this economy—stagnated by the Keynesian inflationary recession perpetuated by this administration—it’s a big one. I don’t get paid a lot, but we can meet all our obligations. I’ve seen the day when we couldn’t do that—and so I’m thankful. God has blessed me in a variety of ways, and I don’t deserve any of them. I’m not particularly good, or skilled, or awesome in any way. He just does what He does, as He sees fit.

I’m thankful for my idiot dog, General Sam Houston. He’s no good at hunting birds, guarding property, or even showing many signs of vigorous life. But he’s a loyal friend who is completely enamored with children and love—the perfect addition to our family.

And I suppose I’m thankful for Thanksgiving. It’s not just a one-day affair for the Mitchells; we have had our giant turkey for days now, sitting in a carefully prepared, secret family brine recipe. Tomorrow morning, I will get up at 4 AM and fire up my wood smoker (that’s right, suburban weenie dads…WOOD smoker) and will use a careful combination of hickory, mesquite, pecan and some apple chips to smoke the perfect Thanksgiving turkey. My wife will start making pies tomorrow—not the store-bought kind, but the old-school kind, rolled out on the counter, like your grandmother used to make. She’ll make five of those—blackberry, cherry, chocolate, pumpkin, and a new homemade mincemeat she’s been perfecting through the year. She will make homemade dressing, cranberry sauce, and also a ham. There will be nothing canned or microwaved or made from a mix on that table tomorrow. That may not be important to you, but to a fat guy who likes food like me—well, it’s a big deal. It’s how Thanksgiving started, and it’s how it continues over here. There will be family hanging around, playing in the big backyard, jumping on the trampoline, wandering around down by the creek. All of it will take place against the warm backdrop of live football on the big-screen. We’ll keep half an eye on the Detroit game because tradition dictates it, but we will become planted for the Cowboys at 3. By 6, we will have reconciled our emotions to their annual epic choke job, and will console ourselves with rummaging through the still-steaming Thanksgiving dinner. The best antidote to Jerry Jones is pie, after all.

Yes, the next day begins the inexorable march to Christmas, and we enjoy that too. But right now….it’s Thanksgiving.

And what could be better than that?