thank-full

We are hosting a dozen guests this year for Thanksgiving. After figuring out to do my conventional grocery-shopping (laundry soap, paper towels, cream of mushroom soup) during Eagles' games and doing my Weaver's Way shopping the minute they open in the morning, I feel that my kitchen is robustly stocked. Now, it's just a matter of getting the menu under control so that I can be a mad-crazy prepping machine tomorrow. Fine-slicing, julienne-ing, etc. I have never done this before, hosted a holiday like this. Geoff and I have had our own holidays for years now, us carving our own funky little traditions (paella on Easter, writing New Year's predictions with champagne, pajamas all day on Christmas) but having larger family there, you really want to honor the over-arching traditions. We have some inter-generational action this year, too. (Can you stay up late playing Taboo by the fire if you have to make coffee for your parents at 6:30a.m?

Anyway, I am trying to be a more open-hearted hostess. An intuitive and wise (yet totally unchurched) friend was telling me that when she struggles with discontentment and restlessness, she tries to let go of it and await something new and eternal to enter its place. I so want this, the maturity and wisdom to RELEASE my clench-grip on perfection, or the admiration of others, or even the structure of a schedule OR the need for a new car or something tangible and to LET GO and await something from God to take its place. I think something supernatural would have to happen for me to have that kind of patience.

Here's to your holiday, reader, may something in you soften and release. And may something completely OTHER enter its place, something too beautiful to explain and may it stay with you.