Well, that was fun…

…and made a lovely addition to our soup at supper last night. Our bacon-potato-carrot-hard-boiled-egg-soup-with-a-little-chicken-and-parsley. {Yum.}

My online friend Beth linked to the turkey platter idea and my children had fun putting it together while the broth ran over and burned on the stovetop and the babies yelled for food and I called for Ryan to come home from his office in the next room so I could survive the final moments of dinner prep.

Meanwhile, in other news, the twins have taken mess-making to a whole new level.

And it’s no wonder my dryer was extra rattle-y. This is the handful my daughter had labelled “special stones” and put in her coat pocket. Most of the world would call it gravel.

Yesterday was the traditional lunch exchange at my sons’ school, with Thanksgiving vacation beginning at noon and excitement riding high. The children always draw names and make a special lunch for a friend, in a decorated box. This year Aarick made a tire, in which the delicious foods he chose had plenty of space to spread themselves.

Regan made a sheep, for a little classmate who loves the animals on her farm.

And Kelly, who does not like being left out, made a snowman and swapped with another preschooler.

In town people are commenting on my pregnancy, saying “How long yet?” “Three weeks,” I tell them, and then they say this word “Tiny” and it makes me want to kiss them even though it is not true. They don’t know what I looked like at the beginning of these nine months.

They also say “You have your hands full!” and “What are you having?”

“We’re having a surprise,” I say, and their eyes light up because it’s so exciting.

I wonder what it means to be thankful in the middle of a messy life. I am thankful, I think, but I am not always content. Are they the same thing? How do you love the life you have while working your bum off to make it a little better?

I don’t mean to make more money or to take nicer vacations. I mean to cook a special dinner, to have a kitchen floor that is reasonably clean (at this stage, sometimes a hopeless ideal), to raise children who know how to work hard and play well and clean things up.

There’s a quote I have lived by for months.

“This is what it means to be an adult, I think: to make peace with the life you didn’t foresee, to see spiritual significance in the daily repeated tasks, and to find fulfillment in doing them well.” – Dorcas Smucker

Her words hold me to hope and purpose in an engrossing season when much other inspiration feels hard, deep, and inaccessible. My friend Wendy lettered it on a chalkboard for me, and I read it often so I will remember. The perfect parallels please the artist in me {to make, to see, to find}, and the truth of it gives me ballast.

I am thankful that in this time of world chaos and upheaval on every level, I have the unmerited joy of a warm house and a spread table, with my smiling {or yelling} creative children gathered around me and a husband who treats me like his beautiful love even in late-term pregnancy. I am thankful for a handful of gravel, and grace for each day’s mistakes, and hope for tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

If you care to, I’d love to hear it right off the top of your head: What are three things you’re thankful for in this moment?