Sometimes Thankfulness Comes in the Stillness

Thanksgiving break, a three-day reprieve from classes and practices (unless there is a game Saturday) used to be filled with packing and cleaning and traveling and extended family. But the year I spent throwing up in the middle of the night from exhaustion put an end to our Thanksgiving travels. It was a hard decision, but the renewed energy that is our reward for resting instead of running has made the end of travel acceptable.

Being married to a college football coach has brought a new perspective to the month of November as well. While families all over the country are finalizing travel plans, cooking ahead for the masses of family who will be arriving soon, and watching the weather, hoping it will cooperate for a few more weeks, all I can think about is the expectation of change and the promise of rest in the near future.

For our family, the end of November carries with it the promise of lazy Saturday mornings as a complete family unit. At the same time, nothing else about November brings routine. Some Novembers bring post-season play, others bring the realization of job changes. Now, in our sixteenth year of living this lifestyle, I’ve begun to connect the turning of the calendar with the expectation of change. Coaches send out resumes, calls are made on behalf of staff, and occasionally there’s an interview for my husband, Ordell, as well. Some coaching families see November as the month they will hear if they even have a job to return to after Thanksgiving. For other coaching families, November means dad is on the road recruiting, only to be seen on the weekends.

In the midst of all the unknown, our family has fought to carve out some time to reconnect during the holidays. This might occur in the form of a getaway for me and Ordell, followed by a “boys’ day out.” Other times it simply means renting all the movies we’ve missed during the fall and watching them together. At every turn we are reminded that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming. The busyness of the holidays is steadily increasing, the calendar is filling with events, and the call for reflection and pausing to be thankful is mixed in.

For many people, November signifies the beginning of the holiday season, a time to be thankful, Black Friday sales, and the anticipated celebration of the end of another year. For our family November brings the need to adjust our routine to make space for Ordell’s presence earlier in our day and more often in our week. After months of traveling every weekend, tailgating rain or shine, sitting on cold bleachers huddled under blankets in various college towns across the Eastern U.S., November often brings exhaustion. As our boys have grown older, the desire to be still in this season has increased. In stillness our family unit reconnects, unifies, and braces itself for what might come. Sometimes extended family or staff joins us for a day of feasting, other times we eat our Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant. The traditional Thanksgiving Day is not overlooked; it is simply not the focus of November.

November has taught me that it is in the stillness that thankfulness is grasped most deeply, rather than in the clamor and the chaos. It is in the moments of reconnecting as a family and in pausing quietly to reflect on all God has carried us through during the year that gratitude is fully realized.

What does your family need to fully realize gratitude this Thanksgiving?

Beth Walker is a football coach’s wife and mom of two energetic boys. As a writer, Beth has been striving to find her own voice through pursuing Jesus, personal life reflection, and her ministry encouraging college women to grow in their relationships with God. She blogs at lessonsfromthesidelines.wordpress.com.

Photograph by JMSchiele.