thanksgiving Archives - Leonard McElveen

Opening Your Home

Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others. – Brian Tracy

It’s That Time of Year

It’s that time of year. The time where we get together with our friends and families. There are food, games and holiday movies to be enjoyed by all. While you’re enjoying this upcoming holiday season, I want you to think about the people that may not be as fortunate as you.

Over the last couple of years, my wife and I have invited people from our church to spend the various holidays with us. To at least come and share a meal with us.

Sometimes it would be friends, but most times it would be someone new might not have had family in town to spend the holiday with.

Whether it was a barbecue for the 4th of July, a potluck style meal for Memorial Day or Thanksgiving. The heart behind it was to be able to spend time with people that we care about.

The last couple of posts that I’ve written have to do with being thankful, and being thankful in our marriages. What we can’t forget is about extending that thankful spirit and inviting people into our circle.

You may be a fortunate person who has loved ones, friends and people around you that you can enjoy the holidays with. Choose during this holiday season to be the change or be a positive influence on someone around you. This is the perfect time of year to begin. This is where we can start.

1. Look At Those That Are Close to Us

An easy place to start is to look at the people and relationships that are close to you. My wife and I started with people in our church, or people in our small groups. Those that as we got to know them, we realized that they might not have aplace to go.

2. Be Wise and Pray

What I’m not saying is that you invite complete strangers into your home. What I am telling you is to pray and use wisdom. Build relationships with people. That’s part of what makes the various holidays fun. Getting to know people that you may not get to spend a lot time with otherwise.

Pray about the people that you should have an impact on. You could be the influence that is needed in their life.

3. Be Comfortable

Being comfortable in your own space is great. You don’t want to lose that. You have to be able to be yourself. You don’t want to bring people into your life, if you are going to feel like to have to put on an act for them.

Doing that doesn’t help them and only drains you. What really impacts people is when you are able to be yourself and be comfortable in your own skin.

Discussion Question:

Have you ever invited someone into your home, or been invited into someone’s home during the holidays? What was the experience like?

A Heart of Thanksgiving

Did you know that being thankful is a lifestyle. We tend to think that it’s just an attitude or an emotion. True thankfulness goes deeper than that. We’ve settled for just saying “Thank You,” and think that is all being thankful is about.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” …-William Arthur Ward

This is the attitude that we bring into our marriages. The other day I was watching one of my newly favorite shows Fresh Off The Boat. I know I’m behind, but hey that’s the benefit of streaming services. I can watch when I want.

A New But Familiar Scene

Anyway back to the episode that I was watching. It was one where the kids in the family had lice. In a comical way the mother was watching out for the kids and in the process contracted lice. The husband decided to leave the house so he could still work. Through this he learned a lesson about how much his wife does for the family. That was when you saw the light bulb go off and he was thankful for her.

Too many times we treat being thankful like in the scene that I described above. We’re not truly thankful until something happens and removes something or someone from our life. Once we realize that it’s gone then we’re thankful.

The scene above also can describe our marriages. Most men aren’t really thankful for their spouses until they are left in a situation where they have to take care of the kids and take on more duties for the family. That shouldn’t be.

Approaching thankfulness this way makes it situational and too easily to forget. We want to have a heart of thankfulness. It’s better for us and our marriages if we can live a life that is full of thankfulness. It can be done, but it’s a process of growth just like everything else.

1. Have a Gratitude List Every Day

It can be easy to forget the things we need to be thankful for if they are not at the top of our minds. I’m a big fan of journaling. As a way to bring some perspective to your day and preparing for it. As you journal it’s good to just everyday do a list of things that you are grateful for.

Making this a practice that you do everyday is great for developing a heart and lifestyle of thankfulness.

2. Be What You Want to See

Most of us want someone to be thankful for what we bring to the table. Whether it is what we do at our jobs or in our marriages, we want to feel appreciated and have someone be thankful for us.

If we want to feel gratitude, then we have to give gratitude. The best way to develop a heart of thankfulness is to begin to show thankfulness to others. Your spouse should be the first one in line experience your new thanksgiving.

3. Expect Nothing in Return

It’s not being truly thankful if you only do things for the response that you get. It won’t be from your heart if you you’re always looking for someone to acknowledge what you did. You’re thankfulness is then selfishness because you like the feeling you get when your act is recognized.

It’s time to develop a thankful heart. This can take your self development, and your marriage to the next level.

Discussion Question:

What do you do to show thankfulness?

The Art of Thankfulness

There is an art to being thankful. Look around yourself and you can see it. Look at the people around us at work, driving in the car, and on any social media platform and you will see how much everything revolves around the individual.

The Art of Thankfulness

The dictionary defines being thankful as expressing gratitude. There is an art to being thankful. A better way to phrase that is to say that there is a heart needed to be thankful. What was the last time that you felt someone gave you a sincere apology?

Being thankful can be hard. When I recognized in myself that I may attempt to be thankful but it doesn’t always come across how I intended. To help myself at trying to be a better communicator, specifically in text messages, I made one change.

If someone I was able to help someone with something then instead of saying “no problem, ” or using a thumbs up emoji, I started responding with “you’re welcome.”

This may not seem like a big change but it accomplishing a couple of things. Saying “you’re welcome,” helps me and the other person on the receiving end. I get to develop humility and instead of acting like I did them a favor I can acknowledge it, and they can feel my appreciation.

From this example I hope that you can see that being thankful is all about your heart.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. This is supposed to be the time of year when we are supposed to be more thankful.

This is the perfect reason to begin to put some things into practice develop a heart of thankfulness.

1. Pray/Meditate

It’s important to start your day with this. If the first thing that you do when you wake up is check your phone for emails or facebook then you place your feelings, and more importantly your mind starts racing.

Praying and meditating is great because it is a part of the self care that you need. It’s going to help you stay grounded and centered for your day. Before you jump into other people’s problems, you must be at peace.

2. Say “Thank you”

Most of the time we don’t say the full thank you. We’ll shorten it and say thanks, or just nod. You might even do a thumbs up emoji. While those short cuts may be efficient they are not effective at helping us have a thankful heart.

So let’s develop the habit of saying the full thank you when someone helps us. If just for a second it puts you in the frame of mind where you fully think through what they did to be a blessing to you.

3. Do Acts of Kindness

If you want to be thankful then help someone else. Set out to start doing random acts of kindness. Don’t worry about how other people receive the acts. Sometimes we can fall into that trap. Where we do something nice and then wait for the acknowledgement or praise of doing the nice act.

Don’t do the acts for the praise or acknowledgement, do it for the reason that you want to do something from your heart.

Discussion Question:

How do you say Thank You?