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This is one of those Thanksgivings when things didn’t go according to Hallmark at our house. Or Norman Rockwell, if you are from that era. We’ve had other years when the holiday season was interrupted by illness, of course. I remember the year my dad had  a terrible case of real influenza. His absence definitely took some merry from our Christmas.

And one year our family ate Christmas dinner at the Shell gas station in a neighboring town because my husband needed to make a house call after church for a friend who was having kidney stones.

The hardest year of all was the Thanksgiving when our micro-preemie granddaughters were born. Ellery Blythe had already gone home to Glory, taking pieces of all our hearts with her. But Claire Felicity was fighting with all her little one-pound, nine-ounce might in the NICU. More than twenty of us gathered at the hospital that day and then ate Thanksgiving dinner at a near-by Cracker Barrel.

All those non-traditional days have some sweet memories attached. And the recurring theme, of course, is the ever-present, all-sufficient grace of God. We believe in His power to heal. (Claire Felicity is proof.) We trust in His mercy to rescue. (We all testify) And we thank Him for His goodness. Even on the hard days.