Thanksgiving has always been a special holiday for my family. As a little girl, it was spent on my maternal grandfather's family farm in Milton, TN, in a farmhouse that still boasted an outhouse until the 1980's. As my mother and her brothers gathered with their families to fill every bed in that house, the love filled every corner until one would have thought it would burst with happiness. It was there I learned that stars can only be really seen in the middle of a cow pasture, in the freezing cold, with 2-3 telescopes your professor and engineer uncles had brought in for everyone's viewing pleasure. And the food — my grandmother was a cook like no other. She cooked so much, it covered every available surface in the dining room, and she is probably the real reason we will be having a cookbook during the administration.
As we enter into this week of joy and Thanksgiving I hope you will reflect on the memories that make this holiday special to us all, as families and as Americans. If not for a few pilgrims that sought a better life, and the natives that helped them make if through those rough first years, our American story might have been much different. As each of us takes time to think about what our blessings have been this year, I want to thank each of you for the blessing you have been to me. This Thanksgiving will be different for some, many of us will have a newly empty seat at the table this year, and some will be remembering a special loved one that has not been with them for some time. Either way, I encourage you to think about what that person brought to your life and the blessings they left with you. This holiday reminds me of our verse for this administration – For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Eccl. 3:1. Let us give thanks for all the seasons we have been given and for those we touch each and every day with our service to God, Home, and Country.
May all the Blessings of Thanksgiving surround you and your loved ones this holiday.
In Service and Love,
Cecile
