Practicing Thanksgiving.

We went swimming on Thanksgiving.Maybe that’s not unusual to you (and if it’s not, count yourself blessed), but it was for me.For the majority of my life I’ve lived in a place where I was more likely to go sledding on a Thursday in late November than swimming (let’s be honest, swimming was never even on our Thanksgiving Day radar unless it was inside at the YMCA). But this year was different. This year I slipped on some flip-flops, conveniently forgot to put on sunscreen, and went swimming with my family.Approximately eight months ago my parents moved 1,200 miles away from South Dakota to Arizona. Hence the swimming.And like any overly-attached early 20-something who’s been through a lot of life changes in the past two years, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it.Sure, I had my own life post-grad, worked at a cool job, lived by my best friends, and dated a cute boy, but there’s something about your parents moving out of the house you’ve called home for 20 years that kind of throws a wrench in things.I felt unmoored.Like I didn’t really have a place to call home anymore.That this was just the beginning of a series of changes that would leave my life spiraling out of control.You get the picture.But I put on a (semi-) brave face. Resolved to make it okay. Convinced myself that home isn’t really a house anyway and told my heart to move on. I didn’t let myself think about that now-empty blue house on Ironwood Drive because I didn’t want to feel the emptiness it had left inside me.I’m pretty good at ignoring hard things. I’ve always had a knack for finding the positive in any situation, and I think that’s a good trait, but that sunny outlook can turn sour really quickly when I choose to avoid rather than express those hard emotions in a healthy way.That’s what I was doing with my parents’ move—avoiding it—until God wouldn’t let me anymore. His flashing sign for me to stop ignoring my feelings came in the form of a visit to a friend’s house in our old neighborhood.There was our old house, right across the street, staring at me. It looked sad. Empty. There was a big lock on the front door. The bushes seemed dead (probably just because it was November, but that helped set my scene), and the basketball court where we used to play out on the driveway looked lonely.I cried that day in the car after visiting my friend. A lot. I’m a crier, so that’s not super unusual for me, but still, it was hard. But let’s get back to that Thanksgiving swimming.There I was, just swimming around our family’s pool at my parents’ new house in Arizona, and I felt content. Happy. Thankful. At home.That was weird. I mean, swimming can do a lot for a person, but these feelings were almost a total 180-degree flip for me.Because the thing was, I wanted to be mad at my parents—had been mad at them, in fact. They’d packed up and moved away from my place of comfort, the place I could always go back to, the place I always knew was there, and they left me here as a barely-there adult having to figure out this life thing all on my own (we’re not going to mention the fact that they didn’t really have a choice in moving, that I still saw them just about as often, and that I have a great support system where I live). The fact is, I was still feeling all these emotions, no matter how irrational or unfair they were.I felt abandoned, and I wanted to sit in that feeling. To sulk in it.But I didn’t feel that way while swimming on Thanksgiving. Actually, I felt the opposite. What changed (besides a chlorinated body of water and a 40 degree jump in temperature)?My attitude.Instead of just celebrating Thanksgiving with a turkey and some green bean casserole, I chose to practice it. I chose to give the house in Arizona, my parents, and my idea of home another chance, and I came up with thanksgiving.Thanksgiving for a circumstance I didn’t choose, but was choosing to make the best of.Thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness despite the changes life all too often brings.Thanksgiving for a family that was practicing thanksgiving, too.I feel like we can adopt that complacent, bitter attitude a lot, but maybe, especially this time of year, we see thanksgiving, we see joy, we see peace, and we choose not to actually put them into practice. Instead we want to be mad, so we are. We want to be hurt, so we stay hurt. We want to believe that life is out to get us, so we do.But I don’t want to be like that anymore.I don’t want to sit in those negative feelings of self-centeredness and believe everyone is against me. And conversely, I don’t want to just see those good things—thanksgiving, joy, peace, contentment—anymore, I want to practice them, just like I did that day in the pool.Because I know there will be harder days in my life, days where I’ll want to do anything but practice thanksgiving, circumstances that won’t make sense, or situations I wish I could change. But how I react to hard things now will determine the course my life takes in the future.Will I choose to practice things like thanksgiving, understanding, joy,  and the fruits of the Holy Spirit, or will I be determined to let those opportunities to be bigger than a sucky situation pass me by, stuck in my bitterness and self-pity?I want to practice thanksgiving. I want smile when the situation says to cry. I want to laugh when the world is determined to silence my joy. I want to swim on Thanksgiving.words by Kaylyn Deiter and photo by Arianna Taralson