Our first family picture, taken at Thanksgiving last year.

Last Thanksgiving was a blur. Blue was 7 weeks old and waking up every 2-3 hours at night to nurse. I was so tired that I could barely function and HandyMan wasn’t doing much better. This year things are much different. Blue is almost 14 months old. He’s completely weaned and sleeps almost 12 hours at night without waking up.

This year we are hosting our Thanksgiving dinner, something I couldn’t have imagined doing last year at this time. As I’m getting ready to start preparing some of our food for Thanksgiving, I’ve been thinking about all that we have to be thankful for. There are so many things: our home, our family, Blue, jobs, our church family, and many other things, including the food that will be on our Thanksgiving table.

We are so blessed to have so much when there are so many people in this world and in this country who struggle each day to feed their family. For 6 years before Blue was born, I worked as a social worker visiting families in their homes. I worked with hundreds of families in different walks of life and had the opportunity to really see and build relationships with families who legitimately didn’t know where their next meal was going to come from. It was heartbreaking when they showed me the insides of their cabinets or refrigerator and there was nothing. It really puts in perspective the times that I would stand in front of my open fridge complaining that there was “nothing to eat” when in reality there was nothing I WANTED to eat. I’ve never been in a place in my life where I really didn’t have anything to eat. And I’m thankful for that. I’m also thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to work with and hopefully help families who were going hungry. It’s made me a better and more compassionate person and it’s also helped me to not to take for granted what I do have.

Now that I’m a mom, I look back on those days and working with those families. I can’t imagine being in a position where I didn’t know how I was going to feed my baby. I now better understand how many of those parents would choose to be hungry so their children could eat.

I wonder what those families would think if they knew that there were so many people arguing about what was the “best” kind of food to eat while they had nothing?

Instead of just being thankful that we have food to eat, we get caught up in arguments about our food, organic vs. conventional, cane sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup, vegetarian vs. carnivore, etc.  Are those arguments really that important when there are people who don’t have anything to eat? Let’s put those arguments aside and take some time to be thankful for the food on our plates, the freedom to choose to eat what we want and remember those who might be going hungry on a week where most people are eating themselves into a food coma.

~guest post by MRS

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Reflections in Your Thanksgiving Plate
Food Choices