The following is
a story that was published in my book, “Woman To Woman Wisdom”. It is one of my most popular stories so I was asked to post it again. As you prepare to enjoy one of the most celebrated holidays remember to focus on what's most important: love and family. If your dinner doesn't turn out perfectly, enjoy it anyway!
The Turkey Exchange
Most of us really cherish
family gatherings during the holidays. If your family is like mine, you have certain
traditions that you respect and follow every year. At my house, holidays for
the most part are fairly predictable:
special family recipes are shared, cherished stories are retold,
relationships are rekindled, and
in some cases new traditions begin.
But holidays can also be times loaded with
stress, especially our best-laid
plans threaten to collapse. As
I’ve learned, in such times you simply need to adapt as best you can and then
look for the blessings it brings.
This was the case for our family one Thanksgiving several years
ago. My husband kids and 1 decided
to spend a nontraditional Thanksgiving aboard a small fishing boat anchored off
the beach in Baja California. As
with every year, I wanted this to be a memorable and perfect holiday for my
family—so I was a little bit anxious about our change in plans. Everything had to be precisely
choreographed so that we could make the best use of the small space—and even
smaller oven!
Weeks ahead of time, we made lists that
included the measurement of the oven, the pots and pans available, etc. Upon close scrutiny, we decided
that the oven would accommodate only an eight-pound turkey, which would be
quite a change from our usual twenty-two to twenty-five-pounder. About two weeks prior to the trip, I
found a great price on an eight-pound turkey, and I tossed it in the
Deepfreeze. About the same time,
my mother called and wanted to know if we had room in our Deepfreeze to store a
twenty-two pounder for her. She
was planning on having guests for Thanksgiving dinner and needed a turkey
bigger than her freezer could hold.
“No problem,” I told her.
“I have plenty of room.”
So we prepared for our trip. My very helpful husband always packs
the cooler for all of our family outings—it’s just one of the jobs he likes to
do. So while I was helping the
kids get their bags closed up, Robert loaded the turkey into its “cold box” for
our trip, and off we went. Well,
you can imagine my surprise when, at our destination, I opened the ice chest to
find a huge turkey staring back at
me! Robert had inadvertently taken
my mother’s turkey! I screamed at
him to come and explain why he’d done such a stupid thing. Poor Robert didn’t know that my mother
had stored her turkey in our freezer.
His defense was that when he looked in the Deepfreeze, he only saw one
thing that looked like a real
turkey to him…so that was the one he took! This didn’t make any sense to me, because we’d discussed the
size of the turkey weeks ago. But
to Robert, it just did not compute that a small eight-pound turkey would
actually look more like a frozen chicken.
He had taken what looked to him like the only turkey.
Well, after getting quite upset—and after
leaving a panic-stricken and apologetic voice message for my mom via cell
phone—I finally calmed down. And,
of course, we had a really good laugh about it all and prayed that my mother
would hear the voice message in time to shop of a new turkey. I did feel really terrible about flying
off the handle, but really, who doesn’t get stressed out by the holidays,
especially when you want everything to be perfect?!
Well, you know what?
Our Thanksgivings weren’t ruined after-all. My possibility-thinking husband creatively butchered the
turkey so as to fill our small, eight-pound roasting pan beautifully. We gave the rest of the bird to a local
family nearby, and they were very happy about it—because, as it turned out, it
was to be their only taste of turkey on Thanksgiving! And it worked out OK for my mother, as well, because her
dinner party plans changed and her company did not come. We had a lot to thank God for on that
Thanksgiving Day. Truth be told,
there were blessings enough to go around—blessings of sharing, blessings of new
acquaintances—as we gave away our extra turkey to another family. And it was all made possible by the
unexpected “turkey exchange”! No
one could have planned it better than, of course, our Father, the Grantor of
all blessings.
There’s a Yiddish proverb that says, “Man
plans, God laughs.” (of course
that’s true for women too!) I like to imagine God holding his breath, waiting
for Donna to explode when she discovered that the enormous turkey instead of
the one she’d been expecting! As
this situation taught me, God always has a way of making our mishaps work out
somehow. I should have
remembered this when I blew-up at poor Robert! When things don’t go as we think they should…when our
holiday plans get messed up…when people don’t do the things we think they
should do, we need to keep in mind that God is in charge, and if we trust in
Him, He will help us through. In
this case, my family survived—even thrived—and had a wonderful Thanksgiving
after all, even if it didn’t go exactly as I had planned.
Remember this the next time you make a
cake for the school bake sale—and your son drops it on the floor. Remember this when you get to your
vacation destination---and discover your luggage was shipped someplace else. Remember this when you’re racing to
make an appointment---and your car battery picks the same day to die. Stay calm. Ask God to show you the wisdom in your situation---and ask
Him to let you be pleased with the surprise blessings it brings. And learn to laugh when things go
wrong---which I have to tell you, we’ve done so many times since that day.
Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
God
is blessing you. Donna
