Many of us have just returned from Thanksgiving break. We have spent time with family. For some it was good and others it was not so nice. We are now in the last few weeks of school and finals are fast approaching, and after finals comes Christmas. A holiday of giving, yet, unfortunately, in our society it has become more a holiday of this is what I want and you can get this for me. The holiday is supposed to be like Thanksgiving - a time to come together as family and be together.

Unfortunately, though, for me, Christmas is a time when people want to be given to. When I was younger, I could come up with a long list of what I wanted. But now Christmas is not the same. I can barely come up with a list of maybe five items. I see that it has become a highly commercial holiday, that has fallen far from its humble beginnings. Just like Thanksgiving, our country has turned the holiday into a dollar sign. Thanksgiving and Christmas are supposed to be a time we celebrate what we are thankful for. A family, a house, clothes to wear and many other blessings. Yet it has now become all about what an individual wants and only what they want. Black Friday, I would say, is one of the worst days of the year. It is a time when people fight for things that they could live without. And at Christmas thousands of dollars are again wasted on things that people need not. Currently, there are some things I would like but know I can live without. I can’t deny that deals are nice, but I have found myself rather than spending my money choosing to spend time with my family. The money we spend on things that most often get thrown away could be used to greater use elsewhere. Just a few examples are: paying for the surgery of a kid with a cleft palate, sponsoring a kid overseas, paying to dig a well so people can have clean drinking water, and the list goes on. These are just one reason that these holidays are hard for me.

These holidays fall into the worst season for me. Thanksgiving gets me into the mood of reminiscing the past, which does me no good. It gets me down and depressed. Like the Instagram post I put in my first article. It puts me in the mood for two months. I continually wish I could go back to what was. But I need to look to toward the future, because I can’t imagine what God has planned for me. Rather than wanting to go back to what was, I should rather long to make better what is. That way I can make great experiences for the next the season of my life.

Friends, if you struggle with looking at what was - look at what is, and just remember that we need to be thankful for what we do have. It is easy to look at what we don’t have and really want to go back or try to make it appear again. But the truth is we can’t and God has us exactly where he wants us. Also, remember to be thankful for what we do have. There are millions of people worldwide who have so much less and we can help in many different ways.