Thanksgiving: the great debate.
The Battle
I've been married 28 years! Early on I realized we were two very different people. He liked 80's Hair Bands. I liked Broadway tunes. He can stop after one cookie. I cannot. He was a white bread stuffing on Thanksgiving guy. I'm a cornbread dressing kind of girl.
That last one was the hardest. You don't mess with tradition. Especially the holiday where we all have permission to over-eat and post pictures of food. He, of course, doesn't really over eat that much so he didn't understand my objection: Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving without cornbread dressing.
The problem was that I loved him. And I really did want to spend the rest of my life with him - including Thanksgiving. Our first Thanksgiving we were at his family's house. I didn't want to be "that" daughter-in-law, so I tried white bread stuffing with ground sausage. It was AMAZING. Like really, really GOOD!!!!
But it didn't feel like Thanksgiving.
The next year we were with my family and had cornbread dressing. He liked it but it wasn't Thanksgiving for him.
After a few years, it didn't matter. Thanksgiving was more about the people than the food. Sometimes we had both types. Sometimes just one. No matter what we were thankful, because we were together.
As the blogger/author Seth Godin says:
The hallmark of a resilient, productive and sustainable culture is that disagreements aren’t risky.
When someone cares enough to make an assertion and show their work, a healthy organization or society takes a look.
The alternative is the brittle, closed culture of talking points, loyalty oaths and unquestioned status quo. It might be a neighborhood social club, a large corporation or a nation, but the principle remains.
What happens when we disagree? Because when the world changes (and it always does) we’ll probably end up disagreeing sooner later. Being good at it is a skill.
It's taken 28 years. But now we can disagree and it doesn't always become a big deal. Sometimes it does but we've learned to move past such things. In fact, many times our disagreements help us to grow into better people who see the world in a new way. It's not easy to do life together, but it's worth it.
-Shannon
P.S. - I'm a United Methodist Clergywoman. And while this post is 100% true, it's also a metaphor. IYKYK
"I thank my God every time I remember you." - Philippians 1:3
#faith
#prayer
#HolyMischief
I wish the whole world could learn from your point if view. Being able to disagree amicably is a skill that needs practice and nurturing. It is obvious that a big part of our American culture has resorted to violence, specifically guns, to solve our differences instead of an agreement to disagree. God help us to turn to him instead of the violence we are seeing throughout the U.S. ĢLORIA DEUS.