The Thanksgiving holiday is all about taking time to reflect on the blessings we have experienced in the past year and giving thanks for those blessings. The Hanukkah holiday is about remembering the faithfulness of God to His people and the miracles He performs in keeping His promises. This year, for the first time in over a hundred years, the Hanukkah holiday started on Thanksgiving, causing the celebration of both days to be joined.
I love Thanksgiving. It's one of my favorite holidays for many reasons, but mostly, I love the family element to it. I also love the story of Hanukkah and love the idea of celebrating God's faithfulness and His miracles. This year, though, both holidays were particularly special because of what I experienced. I call it my Thanksgiving/Hanukkah miracle.
This story starts 22 years ago, when my dad took six of us kids to visit my grandparents on their farm for the first time. It was the summer of 1991 and it was the first time my siblings and I would meet the majority of my dad's family. For the first part of our lives we didn't even know we had family outside of Tucson and we had only just met our grandparents 2 years before that. This might not seem strange to many of you, but my dad's family has been in East Texas for generations and everyone has grown up around each other with their kids all playing together and knowing everyone in the family. My dad was the only one of his brothers who did not live near by and whose children did not really know the family. So, our trip to Texas that year was pretty important.
During our stay in Texas that summer, we had a mini family reunion so that we kids could meet all the family, and it was pretty amazing. I had no idea there were so many Winchesters in the world, much less that I was directly related to so many of them. It was a great trip, and I remember thinking that for the first time in my life I really felt like I had family roots. My grandparent's farm instantly became a home away from home, and I place I would always love going back to.
In the summer of 1991, my parents were going through a separation and my family was a split one. There were many broken relationships and it didn't look like things were going to be fixed any time soon. My grandparents longed to have a relationship with all their grandkids and they wanted my dad to be reconciled with my mom. At the end of our stay with them that summer, my dad, my grandparents, and my siblings and I all gathered in the living room of my grandparent's farm and said a prayer before we headed out on our drive home to Arizona. As my grandfather prayed, he asked the Lord to one day bring us all back safely to the farm as a whole family, my mom included. At the time, it didn't seem like that would ever be possible, but my grandfather prayed for it anyway.
Twenty-two years passed and during that time, many things changed. In 1996, five years after my grandfather prayed that prayer, he passed away from a brain tumor. He did not live to see the whole family together at the farm, but he did get to see all my dad's children make separate trips to the farm. In 2007, my grandmother passed away. She got to enjoy seeing all my dad's children make several trips to the farm and even got to see my dad's first grandson make a trip to the farm, but still, she never saw the whole family there. My mom and dad were divorced by this time and the family had not been whole in almost 20 years. It seemed like my grandfather's prayer on that summer day so long ago was not going to be answered.
In 2010, after 21 years of separation, God did a miracle. My parents reconciled and were remarried. God had done the impossible in bringing them back together. Last year, my mom made her first trip to the family farm with my dad.
This year, on Thanksgiving, my mom and dad and all their children and grandchildren made the trip to the family farm in East Texas. It was the first time all of us has been at the farm at one time, as a whole family. For the first time, all of us participated in one of the traditional Winchester Thanksgivings on the farm, and after 22 years, my grandfather's prayer was answered.
I cannot tell you what that meant to me; to be a part of that; to watch it happen. I am still in awe at the faithfulness of God and His ability to make the impossible a reality. While I wish that my grandparents had been there to see this miracle happen, I know that they must have been watching from Heaven and their hearts must have been bursting with gladness. How great is God and how faithful is He?? I am so thankful that He is all of that and more. I am thankful that He answers prayer, even if it is not on our timetable, and even if we don't ever see it. I am thankful that He steps out of Heaven and inserts Himself in this broken, chaotic world, working miracles and creating beautiful masterpieces that proclaim how great and marvelous He is. This Thanksgiving season I am giving thanks, and this Hanukkah season, I am again reminded that God is faithful and He works miracles.
