Are You Giving Thanks for Your Changing Family—and Your Changing Holidays?

Are You Giving Thanks for Your Changing Family—and Your Changing Holidays?

Posted on by Michele Morin

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite days of the entire year. It’s all about preparation: rolling pie crust, making yeast rolls, peeling vegetables, boiling cranberries, and assembling the traditional turkey stuffing with lots of celery. With Handel’s Messiah blasting in the background, I pour a year’s worth of gratitude into every aspect of the next day’s feast.

I’ll be doing that this year, too, so if you’re reading this post on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you can picture me covered in flour and surrounded by dirty dishes and delightful chaos. However, this year, for the first time, we won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving here on the hill! While I’m giving thanks for my changing family, I’ll also be giving thanks for our changing holiday traditions.

Giving Thanks for Change?

Our sons and their families are on an every-other-year holiday schedule with us and their in-laws, and this is “our year” to have all 17 Morins together for Thanksgiving dinner. Since one of our sons has to be on-call for his work that day, we’re planning to land at his place (and hope his phone doesn’t ring!)

That means this year our family Thanksgiving is being relocated. It’s also being reassigned! I won’t be single-handedly preparing the whole dinner and then serving it up here on the hill. I will be assigned certain specific items to bring to the feast just like everyone else.

For parents of adult children, change is on the menu whether we have an appetite for it or not, and we love our families best when we receive change with grace. Rejecting unrealistic expectations, refusing to manipulate with guilt, and saying no to the insidious tendency to keep score (as if our fellow in-law counterparts are the competition) are all ways of practicing open-handed love for our changing families.

Are You Giving Thanks for Your Changing Family—and Your Changing Holidays?

When Paul counseled the church at Rome to “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good,” he was pointing toward a Christ-like love that enables a loving mother to kick herself out of the center of the universe and embrace the good of peaceful family togetherness. (Romans 12:9)

In the same spirit as Paul’s command to “let love be genuine,” Amy Carmichael prayed,

Love through me, Love of God;
     Make me like Thy clear air
Through which, unhindered, colors pass
     As though it were not there.”

Given half a chance, the love of God will enable us to reject negativity or prideful insistence on having our own way.

The handed-down love of God is trustworthy and openhanded. Holding my heart to the high standards of genuine love cuts across all my natural tendencies to control and to self-protect. It cancels my cherished job description as God’s Official Northeast Representative. However, rising to that challenge with a strength that is not my own puts the power of God on display for the next generation and frees my children to establish the habit of looking first to God, and then to each other, for all that they need.

  • Tell me, what changes are on the agenda for your Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons this year?
  • Are you managing change—or is change managing YOU?

Holding you in the light,

For parents of adult children, change is on the menu whether we have an appetite for it or not. We love our families best when we receive change with grace.

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Published by Michele Morin

Michele Morin is a Bible teacher, writer, reader, and gardener committed to the truth that women can become confident Christ-followers and students of God's Word. She has been married to an unreasonably patient husband for thirty-plus years, and together they have four married sons and a growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. Michele loves hot tea and well-crafted sentences, poems that stop her in her tracks, and days at the ocean with the whole family. She laments biblical illiteracy and advocates for the prudent use of “little minutes.” She blogs at Living Our Days, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

24 thoughts on “Are You Giving Thanks for Your Changing Family—and Your Changing Holidays?”

  2. While our Thanksgiving won’t be hugely different this year we will be down a few more family members as more have moved away. I’m definitely embracing this change though and am just happy to have all 3 boys here (since I know that might not always be the case!). Our Christmas will be HUGELY different this year but again I am looking forward to these changes. I have even warned my family they might be repeated next year. Enjoy your new changing holiday!

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  4. Changes take place as our families also change. Thank you for reminding me to be flexible, to accept the changes. I am most thankful that while our Thanksgiving Day may change, our God does not. He remains consistent and constant. Have a most blessed Thanksgiving, Michele!

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  5. I find when family traditions change I don’t always immediately adjust. I’m getting better because it’s inevitable. I still vividly remember family celebrations when I was young and I remember when the changes began I felt devastated. Now I’m thankful that I’m still with family even if it looks different.

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  6. LOVE this. Living it, too. I couldn’t be happier to have passed the baton on to the next generation.

    I’ve got the stuffing under control. I’ll take care of creating the big pot of soup on Friday. All is well.

    Enjoy, dear friend.

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  7. Thanks so much for the good reminders. You and I are in the same season of life and I need your encouragement to practice open-handed love and not keep score. Thank you you for the Romans passage to meditate on as well as Amy Carmichael’s prayer.  Blessings to you and your family.  Alicia 

    Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

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  8. It’s been nice to split Thanksgiving cooking with a daughter-in-law the last several years. Yet as each child has come to adulthood and a daughter-in-law and then a grandson have been added to the mix, we’ve had to adjust to changes over the years–different preferences, allergies, and the tension between those who want everything the same and those who want to try something new. It’s so true, and a needed reminder, that “we love our families best when we receive change with grace.”

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  9. Change is my WOTY & so much change has happened this year.

    Families always bring change, some change is good other change is rather challenging Michele.

    I’ve found that as each generation grow into adults & have their own children as the Mum, Grandmum & great Grandmum while I still have a role, that role changes with each new season of life & I need to take a step back to allow the next generation to step into their roles.

    An example of this is; I became a great grandmother last year, my daughter is now the grandmother to her grandchild (my great grandchild).

    While I’m still the Mum to my daughters & Grandmother to my grandchildren (who are all fast becoming adults), my central role has changed (as you mention above). It feels like stepping back into the shadows from the spotlight.

    This is an adjustment & can only be done with love & grace through Jesus. Blessings, Jennifer

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  10. My grandparents, parents, and extended family set a good example, as we spent holidays in various locations, celebrating when it was possible for the majority to gather. Some years we’d have several Christmases–with different segments of the family at different times. We learned that it wasn’t the date that mattered so much; it was the occasion for love and togetherness that did.

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  11. We don’t have Thanksgiving in Australia, Michele, but I appreciate the sentiment you’ve shared. Just as our parents had to find ways to adapt when the needs of our families needed to be prioritised, so it is for us when our children’s needs bring more adaption. Good on you for seeing the changes and flowing with them. Happy Thanksgiving.

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    1. I really DON’T want to add to their already full plates by becoming someone that my kids have to “manage!” It’s so good for our sanctification process as we get older to fold in a bit of flexibility.

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  12. Amen to this: “Given half a chance, the love of God will enable us to reject negativity or prideful insistence on having our own way.” Times are definitely changing here. Very seldom does the whole family get together. Everyone has their own schedules but we still managed to have 14 of us at Thanksgiving and it was a blessing. I am thankful even for change because I know God is working even there. Blessings to you, dear Michele!

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