Feasting with Friends

I woke up to the muffled groaning of my husband, and his tossing and turning in the bed. “Are you all right?” I asked, groggy from being awakened from a deep sleep. He proceeded to get up and shake some antacids from a bottle on my dresser. “My stomach hurts and I’m nauseous,” he said as he popped the tablets into his mouth and stumbled back to the bed, tumbling in and pulling the covers back over himself. Another groan escaped his lips. “Antacids probably aren’t going to help the nausea,” I murmured in my sleepy state. He grunted an affirmation, said something about acid reflux, and rolled over.

Usually empathetic, but tired and knowing that I could do nothing to solve his tummy problems, I rolled over too, trying to go back to sleep as random thoughts about food poisoning and the flu floated through my brain. It was the night before Thanksgiving and I knew he would be down and out for the coming day, but I tried to push the thoughts out of my head because it was just. . .too. . .sad. Sleep would give me an escape.

It’s our first Thanksgiving in our East Asia home without our kids. They are all in great places, with family or framily (friends who are like family) so I wasn’t worried about them. I knew that they would each have a wonderful and warm celebration, giving thanks with people who are significant to them. But how would we mark the day?

Celebrating Thanksgiving, in our particular context, living in a different culture, working on multi-cultural teams can be a complex thing. Who celebrates, who they want to celebrate with, the size of apartments, the number of participants, what makes thanksgiving FEEL like Thanksgiving, can make for a complicated dance involving dozens of people and their expectations. Sometimes toes get stepped on and shins get kicked. There have been a couple of years where we have traveled, in part, to avoid the possible chaos. Once everything settles down, the Day itself is wonderful, but getting there can feel hazardous.

We finally landed on spending Thanksgiving Day with a wonderful group of young people that live about an hour outside the city. They had invited us to join them, and it promised to be a fun, intimate day of food and fellowship. Eleven of us would share a table and feast together as we remembered the Lord’s goodness to us. But by morning, Doug’s night time nausea was joined by a low grade fever and an achy body. It was obvious that he’d be spending the day at home on the couch, leaving me to head out alone.

“Alone” is a tough word for me. I’m sure it is for a lot of people. Having grown up in a “do everything together” culture, coupled with the fact that for years, I incorrectly defined “alone” as “unwanted,” and designed with a personality that is highly inclusive of others, doing things ALONE is not high on my “favorite ways to do things” list. Navigating the roads, by myself, in a car in East Asia traffic, to a neighborhood over an hour away, to spend the day with people I love, yet don’t know very well yet, unsettled my heart in a deep way. I was sad and disappointed. This quickly morphed into a simmering anger because I thought that I wasn’t getting what I wanted or needed.

For the first time in 27 years, I would spend Thanksgiving without a single person in my family. And, for the most part, I would be spending the day with people I had known for mere months, not years. When I was going to do it with Doug by my side, it was an adventure. Without Doug, my heart labeled it tragedy. (I’m not melodramatic, you’re melodramatic.)

I got my heart and my food together, struggled to hold back my tears,  and left the house, my phone GPS declaring loudly which direction I should drive, even though I was walking down the hall to the elevator.  A number of kilometers and deep breaths later, I began to sing.

Softly, but steadily, I started. . .Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son. . .over and over, until the Spirit could soften my heart to really hear the words I was singing. It took a little while for my angry and defiant heart to soften. I was willing, but weak. The step to sing what I knew to be true was an act of mustard seed faith. . . And now, let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, because of what the Lord has done for us. Give Thanks. Over and over, the words and the melody washed over me, punctuated by the GPS telling me to keep going, that a camera was coming up, make sure my seatbelt was on, and abide by the speed limit.

It turned out to be a fantastic afternoon of fabulous food with new friends. What made it even more amazing was the fact that for most of these young twenty-somethings, this was the first time that they had to make Thanksgiving dinner happen on their own. And they did it with “flying colors” in a foreign country! As we shared around the table of what a “typical” Thanksgiving dinner looked like back home, many of the stories included something along the lines of, “my mom/grandmother cooks the whole meal. . .” Our meal was a literal feast, lacking nothing of the traditional American Thanksgiving bountiful spread.

But the highlight of my day happened just before we ate. We were each given a copy of A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends written by Douglas McKelvey, and we stood around the table and read it together before we ate.

Celebrant: To gather joyfully is indeed a serious affair. For feasting and all enjoyments gratefully taken are, at their hearts, acts of war. (An act of war?)

People: In celebrating this feast, we declare that evil and death, suffering and loss, sorrow and tears, will not have the final word. (Yes to this declaration!)

Celebrant: But the joy of fellowship, and the welcome and comfort of friends new and old, and the celebration of these blessings of food and drink and conversation and laughter are the true evidences of things eternal, and are the first fruits of that great glad joy that is to come and that will be unending. (cue tears. . .)

As we read, my heart quickened and my eyes filled. This day, this celebration, was not only about family and gathering to give thanks for our blessings, which are many.   Further lines of the liturgy read:

“So let our feast this day be joined to those sure victories secured by Christ. Let it be to us now a delight and a glad foretaste of His eternal kingdom. . .May this shared meal, and our pleasure in it bear witness against the artifice and deceptions of the prince of the darkness that would blind this world to hope.”

Stop and read that through again. . . aloud. . . s l o w l y. . .

I had never clearly linked the celebration of Thanksgiving to our victories secured in Christ. I had not really pondered that the feasting and fellowship we experience now is perhaps a foretaste of the eternal kingdom to come. I’d never really considered that my taking pleasure in a delicious meal, prepared and served with love and joy stood as a witness against the deceptions of darkness that blind the world to the Hope found in Christ.

Mind. Blown.

This is how I want to Feast with Friends, both now and forever.

“Now you who are loved by the Father, prepare your hearts and give yourselves wholly to this celebration of joy, to the glad company of saints, to the comforting fellowship of the Spirit, and to the abiding presence of Christ who is seated among us both as our host and as our honored guest, and still yet as our conquering King. AMEN.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Find the full liturgy here:  https://www.everymomentholy.com/liturgies