This Thanksgiving, I'm Profoundly Grateful for my Parents

As we approach the holiday of Thanksgiving, there are many things for which we can give thanks - all of us.  But this year, I want to take this as an opportunity to publicly thank the Lord for my parents.  They just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  It is just one mark of the pervasive faithfulness that has been characteristic of both their lives.

I am thankful first and foremost that my parents are Christian, true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Whatever other people might say of their moms and dads, I cannot say that my parents are fake.  They were and are the real thing, and for that I am profoundly grateful.  Are they perfect?  No, and they will be the first ones to tell you that!  But they have been consistent in their faith in Christ.  They have not only talked a good talk, but they have walked The Good Walk, they have fought a good fight, and kept the faith.  

My brothers and I got to see their faith lived out in a multitude of ways.  They always trusted in the Lord to provide for them even when the income wasn't coming in.  I got to see that, and I also got to see how God provided again and again.  My dad wrote a song during one of the hard times, the chorus of which goes (based off Psalm 78): 

 The Lord is able

to furnish a table 

in this cold, hard

and barren wilderness.

While the Israelites in the wilderness were saying, "Can God provide  a table in the wilderness?" (Ps. 78:19), my dad was singing, "Yes, he can."  I will always say that the greatest gift my parents gave me was to see their faith in Christ lived out.  For that I am thankful.  

They were (and are) committed to the authority of Christ in his word, even if that kept them from fitting in.  When I was a teenager, my parents embraced Reformed theology when many in their denomination were very much against it.  I remember one hostile letter my dad received from someone he had been rather close to, raking him over the coals for his theological shift.  It hurt my dad, but he never wavered in his commitment to embrace all that God's words says.  Popularity wasn't what my parents were after: it was to be faithful to Jesus Christ.

Another instance in which their commitment to Christ superseded their fitting in was in their decision to stop celebrating Christmas, believing that the holiday had no place in the practice of faithful Christians.  I personally disagree with them on this now, and Sarah and I celebrate Christmas with our kids.  But let me say emphatically that I do not begrudge the many years when I did not celebrate the holiday, nor do I feel like I was somehow robbed of that aspect of my childhood.  No, rather, I am thankful I had parents who were willing out of conviction to make life choices that were hard.  And it was hard for them to do this.  It greatly offended several of the folks they were close to that we didn't celebrate Christmas.  It certainly was out of step with the larger Christian community and the culture at large.  My parents chose faithfulness to Christ over the approval even of other family members.  And I am profoundly grateful to have been able to witness that kind of convictional living in my parents.

My parents chose to homeschool me and my brothers at a time when the legality of homeschooling wasn't even established in Texas. (They started in 1983, I believe.  Incidentally, my family knew the Leeper family whose names are on the famous court case that went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and established the freedoms homeschoolers now enjoy in the Lone Star State.)  Again, we sort of take the ability to homeschool for granted, especially in places like Texas, but it was not the "cool" thing to do when they started.  They started doing it because they felt the public schools weren't doing their job (they weren't), but they kept doing it because they wanted to educate us in the fear of God, which they did.  For that I am profoundly grateful.

I am thankful for the godly instruction my parents gave me.  My mom made us memorize large passages in the Bible, starting at a very young age.  We read the Bible together.  We had morning and evening prayers.  They diligently prayed for me when I was a very rebellious teenager.  I am so thankful for the godly rhythms in which I grew up.

And they loved each other.  I don't think I really appreciated this until I went to college and began to really get to know people from broken homes.  It makes a difference.  I was raised in a home where I never doubted - not once! - the love my parents had for each other, and I never doubted their love for me and my brothers.  It is an unspeakably great gift, and for it I am profoundly grateful.

So to the Lord God on high, I am thankful for the gift of parents who  brought me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).