We can be thankful no matter what's going on at Thanksgiving, as a caregiver, no matter what. We can be thankful. Now some of you all may be spending this time at a hospital, been there, I've told you this. Some of you all may have, you know, a lot of sadness in this time of year.
Been there, done that. I'll never forget Gracie's grandmother, who was just a delightful woman. Her name was Mary Emma. Mary Emma Parker.
My mother's name is Mary Emma. Gracie's grandmother, this is her dad's mother. They were all sitting around the cafeteria table for Thanksgiving at the hospital in Nashville, St. Thomas Hospital, and didn't know whether Gracie would be alive or not. She was in a coma for three weeks following her wreck on November 18th.
And some of you can imagine what that's like. Now I didn't know Gracie at the time, but I've heard this story many times, so I thought I'd just leave it with you all. Gracie's grandmother, she was a beautiful woman, a delightful woman. I did get to know her for many, many years, and was enthralled with her.
Just a lovely, lovely woman. And she had deep roots in East Tennessee. Gracie is herself a ninth generation Tennessean, and Gracie's grandmother was a member of the Daughters of American Revolution. I mean, she just, she embodied so much, and I could spend a lot of time talking about her, but she did something at the hospital that changed the direction for everybody.
Now you've got to think about this. Gracie was hurt on November 18th. Her family was getting prepared for Thanksgiving, and you know, people were going to be coming in and so forth. I've had Thanksgiving at that home down there with her grandmother making it, and they put on a spread.
Oh my goodness. But this year, all of that stopped when they got this terrible call that Gracie had been hurt. And they all dropped everything and went to Nashville. They didn't know anybody really there. Just a few people. Gracie was at school at Belmont, and there were very few people that they knew. And they were sitting there just very lonely in the hospital cafeteria.
Some of you know what that's like. Hospital cafeterias can be extremely lonely places. Now the food at St. Thomas over the years improved dramatically. During that time, it was not all that great. The nuns were in the hospital, and I don't think they were all that worked up about, you know, culinary delights. They felt like it was probably a good thing for everybody to suffer. But the food was not that great.
It is now. I hadn't been there many years, but it got better before we left Nashville. The last time I was there at the cafeteria, it was pretty good.
But at the time, no. So this little sad family is sitting around the table. It's Thanksgiving. They're in a strange city. Their family member is the floor above them. The critical care pods were on the second floor. The cafeteria's on the first. One floor above them, Gracie is hanging on to life by a thread.
Nobody knows what's going to happen. The little bit of time they get to go in and see her in the ICU was just horrific, because Gracie was so, so banged up. And it's Thanksgiving Day, and Grandmother Parker pulls out of her purse a little paper turkey that you put on the table, like they did in school. And she put it on the hospital cafeteria table.
And everybody just stopped for a moment. And she normalized the abnormal. She brought a little bit of sense into the senseless, a bit of tradition into the unknown. And she had a few little tiny decorations for Thanksgiving.
And they sat around and had institutional Thanksgiving meal. And they gave thanks. They gave thanks that Gracie wasn't dead.
By all conventional standards she should have been. But she not only didn't die, she's gone on to live an extraordinary life. And while her life is very difficult, there's a lot to be thankful for. And we do have, as Christians, the ultimate to be thankful for.
That God has seen fit for whatever reason to claim us as His own. You may have to help an impaired loved one eat their Thanksgiving meal. You may have to serve it to them.
You may do all of this by yourself. And in those moments when you feel so lonely, so heart sick, take a moment to remember Gracie's grandmother who put a paper turkey on the table at a hospital cafeteria, a hospital she didn't even know existed until her granddaughter got hurt. They didn't know if Gracie was going to live. But some things are worth stopping for and giving thanks. That though the path seems uncertain, and it does, I still go back and laugh at all the times during COVID people said, during these uncertain times, you and I both know as caregivers they've never been certain.
The only certainty we have is that we have no idea what's around the corner when it comes to caregiving. But the certainty that we cling to is that God is who He says He is, even in caregiving. That He who began a good work is faithful to complete it. That His mercies are new every single morning, as Jeremiah said in Lamentations.
These are things that are certain. These are things that are immutable, that God is unchanging. Thou changest not. Thy compassions they fail not.
He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And as we deal with the ebbs and flows and the winds and the storms that accompany our life, particularly as caregivers, I am strengthened and I am bolstered that our God changes not. Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, even in a hospital on Thanksgiving Day, and our eternal home. If you're looking at an empty chair this year, if you're in a hospital, if you're looking at someone across the table who doesn't recognize you anymore, if any of those things or things that are too numerous to mention are a part of your Thanksgiving, and your heart falters at those things, remember a paper turkey that a woman put on a hospital cafeteria just one floor below her granddaughter fighting for her life to say, we're going to be thankful. We're going to have Thanksgiving to the best of our abilities. And we're going to be grateful.
And she was. She lived an exceptional life of gratitude. I would honor her memory by doing the same.
And I invite you to do it with me. Let's be grateful. Let's give thanks. If you need some help with that, I offer Gracie's song, Thankful.
It's wherever you download music or certainly at our website, HopeForTheCaregiver.com. And Happy Thanksgiving. And I'm thankful that this woman that you're listening to right now, she lived. And what a life she's lived.
Happy Thanksgiving. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope For The Caregiver. HopeForTheCaregiver.com.
Here's Gracie. Thank you for my life. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the chance. Thank you for the madness. Thank you for the dance. Thank you for forgiveness. Not softening the bone. Thank you for your love. I'm thankful for it all.
