A Salty Thanksgiving Back Bend

Being uprooted from my home for a few days and living in the aftermath of a violent tornado that literally destroyed my neighborhood, has required a new degree of flexibility for myself and my family.  Lets face it, nobody likes change.  Now back at  home, my neighborhood is a square mile traffic jam of bulldozers, front loaders, dump trucks, and other  machines that I will likely never drive in my lifetime.  I'm not real concerned about the piles of rubble lining the streets or that the school bus isn't servicing the area for my children.  The United Way volunteer team cleaned up the mess of shingles, fence and who knows what from my yard;  our family and church friends decided to give back and clean the neighbor's yard.  My friend lost her house and scavenged her personal belongings along the roadside for all to see...how humbling.   When bringing her family a meal at their new rental home, the children had an especially flexible view on the situation:

Kid:  "Hi Mrs. Galles (hug) our house blew away so we get to live here now."

If it were only this easy, but maybe it is this easy?  According to his mom, immediately after emerging from their basement closet bunker to find their house destroyed, this child was overwhelmed about not having Thanksgiving, and is now VERY excited to be in a new home to celebrate Thanksgiving in tomorrow.

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?"    

It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. 

Luke 14:34-35.  

This scripture has always intrigued me because Jesus is literally saying that losing saltiness is like being a rejected piece of crap that is not useful to be included with the pile of bull crap that is at least useful for something!  The Bible translators didn't make it so crude (and in my opinion lost the saltiness) for our tender over righteous politically correct ears...shoot!   I'm glad to have a home this Thanksgiving.  I'm grateful my family is safe and all of my community miraculously survived this storm.  My schedule is careening all over the place and I'm bending over backwards to keep normalcy.  Good thing I practice back bends in yoga!  I'm keenly aware of the pity party I've had in previous Thanksgivings during this "difficult time of year".  Another friend of mine just lost her young niece to a car accident and was lamenting how it always takes a tragedy for her to realize how grateful she needs to be in life.   Seasoning our gratitude with saltiness requires pain, or at least a bit of inconvenience and flexibility.  As you sit down to feast on Thanksgiving tomorrow, bend over backwards to season your gratitude with some salt.  Salt on a wound never feels good, though does sterilize, which is better than being a lonely piece of poo-poo!