Bloom!

  My family does not really have one tradition that we have practiced on Thanksgiving throughout the years. So, today I am going to share one tradition with you that my family has done a few years and another tradition that my cousin's always do, both of which celebrate the true meaning of the holiday. Perhaps you can put some of these creative ideas into practice at your Thanksgiving feast tomorrow! First, a few years back I read in a magazine how to make a "Thankfulness Box." I used an old, rectangle box and cut a square in the middle of the lid (a shoebox would work well with this, too). Then I decorated the outside of the box with fall stickers and wrote I Thessalonians 5:18 on each side of the box. After the turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, my family, guests, and I each took turns writing on pieces of paper things we were thankful for and dropped them into the box. Afterwards,

- - Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: "Wait and hope." (Alexander Dumas, " The Count of Monte Cristo ") - Dear Sisters in Christ, - When I was in my teens, it seemed like I spent half my life waiting. Waiting to be picked up from dance class, waiting until I could get a driver's license, waiting to grow up and get married. That last one was the worst: I've known my entire life that I wanted to marry and raise a family, and I knew that desire came from God. I also knew it clearly wasn't God's desire for me to marry when I was, say, thirteen, and so I had to wait. - The hardest part about waiting wasn't even the waiting itself--it was trusting that, ultimately, God would work out His divine plan for my life. I knew plenty of verses about trusting God, and I took comfort from passages like Matthew 7 : "Which of you, if his son asks for br