Three Thanksgivings
I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, LORD, proclaiming aloud your praise and telling of all your wonderful deeds. Psalm 26:6-7
I felt led by the Lord to share with you about three consecutive Thanksgivings in my life. Let's call them holidays A, B, and C.
Thanksgiving A was about five months after our final separation. I was living in a motel. No, not an efficiency, but the least expensive place I could locate. It wasn't much. When I left home, I envisioned living happily ever after with a co-worker. She had gone north to be with her family for Thanksgiving. My holiday meal that day was a TV dinner, eaten alone on a folding card table in my room. That year I had called Charlyne and asked if I could come to our Thanksgiving dinner. She declined my request, citing, “We are through pretending.†Charlyne had filed for divorce and had much anger toward what I had done to our family.
One year later, when Thanksgiving B arrived, I had met someone and was attempting to take the place of an absent father at a strange holiday table. The foods and traditions were far different than what I knew they would be at our home that day. Even over twenty years later, I can still recall wishing I was at home for Thanksgiving. Try as I did, I was still the square peg in a round hole at that Thanksgiving. Her parents knew, her children knew, and I knew. In fact, everyone around that table, including yours truly, knew I did not belong in that picture. Somehow, I imagined that God was overlooking my sin. I silently longed not only for Charlyne's dishes, but also her presence.
The following year, at Thanksgiving C, I was living alone in a townhouse 100 miles from my family. Charlyne and I had begun to communicate a bit and I had commented about missing our family at Thanksgiving. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Charlyne loaded an entire Thanksgiving dinner and our three children into her old car and they brought Thanksgiving dinner to me. All five of us had a blessed day.
So that's when you went home? No, God was calling, but I was still resisting. It took me almost seven months, another move, and much more heartache to “come to my senses,†and remarry my wife. I share about three Thanksgivings today not to illustrate the badness of Bob, but to give praise to the goodness of God. Your prodigal spouse, most likely, is either enduring or enjoying their own A, B, or C Thanksgiving. Often we must go through A and B to get to C.
Holidays are about families, and your prodigal's mind is being bombarded with thoughts of home, holidays, and happiness. We prodigals simply cannot run far enough to get away from the memories or God.
This Thanksgiving and every day before the Christmas holidays, be especially sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Do not stand in the way of an A or B Holiday becoming a C Holiday.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5
Because He lives,
Bob Steinkamp
Rejoice Marriage Ministries, Inc.
I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, LORD, proclaiming aloud your praise and telling of all your wonderful deeds. Psalm 26:6-7
I felt led by the Lord to share with you about three consecutive Thanksgivings in my life. Let's call them holidays A, B, and C.
Thanksgiving A was about five months after our final separation. I was living in a motel. No, not an efficiency, but the least expensive place I could locate. It wasn't much. When I left home, I envisioned living happily ever after with a co-worker. She had gone north to be with her family for Thanksgiving. My holiday meal that day was a TV dinner, eaten alone on a folding card table in my room. That year I had called Charlyne and asked if I could come to our Thanksgiving dinner. She declined my request, citing, “We are through pretending.†Charlyne had filed for divorce and had much anger toward what I had done to our family.
One year later, when Thanksgiving B arrived, I had met someone and was attempting to take the place of an absent father at a strange holiday table. The foods and traditions were far different than what I knew they would be at our home that day. Even over twenty years later, I can still recall wishing I was at home for Thanksgiving. Try as I did, I was still the square peg in a round hole at that Thanksgiving. Her parents knew, her children knew, and I knew. In fact, everyone around that table, including yours truly, knew I did not belong in that picture. Somehow, I imagined that God was overlooking my sin. I silently longed not only for Charlyne's dishes, but also her presence.
The following year, at Thanksgiving C, I was living alone in a townhouse 100 miles from my family. Charlyne and I had begun to communicate a bit and I had commented about missing our family at Thanksgiving. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Charlyne loaded an entire Thanksgiving dinner and our three children into her old car and they brought Thanksgiving dinner to me. All five of us had a blessed day.
So that's when you went home? No, God was calling, but I was still resisting. It took me almost seven months, another move, and much more heartache to “come to my senses,†and remarry my wife. I share about three Thanksgivings today not to illustrate the badness of Bob, but to give praise to the goodness of God. Your prodigal spouse, most likely, is either enduring or enjoying their own A, B, or C Thanksgiving. Often we must go through A and B to get to C.
Holidays are about families, and your prodigal's mind is being bombarded with thoughts of home, holidays, and happiness. We prodigals simply cannot run far enough to get away from the memories or God.
This Thanksgiving and every day before the Christmas holidays, be especially sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Do not stand in the way of an A or B Holiday becoming a C Holiday.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5
Because He lives,
Bob Steinkamp
Rejoice Marriage Ministries, Inc.
