Daly Focus Blog
I love Thanksgiving.
There’s great food – thank you, Jean – and plenty of football. Most important of all, Thanksgiving is a time for thanking God for His incredible blessings.
I’m thankful for my wife and two boys and for the help we’ve been able to provide families through foster care. I’m also thankful for what God does through Focus on the Family. Marriages and preborn babies are being saved. Moms and dads are becoming better parents, and our ministry is leading people to Christ.
Many moms feel overwhelmed by the shopping, cooking, and high expectations of the holiday season.
But making memories doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. One of author Jessica Smartt’s best memories is taking her first communion class. She doesn’t remember a lot of theology, but she does remember her mother taking her through a McDonald’s drive-thru to get a cheeseburger afterward. Just the two of them together, eating in the family pickup truck.
This time of year, it’s good to remember that a good reason for traditions is to connect with your children, to let them know that their family supports them, and to bond them deeply to their Christian faith.
It’s been over 400 years since the first Thanksgiving – and yet the more times change, the more they remain the same.
Thanksgiving 2023 comes during a highly volatile and uneven time in America’s history. Dissension and dysfunction seem to be everywhere. Anger and frustration are running high. You can feel it. You can see it.
Whether politically, economically, socially or spiritually, nobody knows for sure what is coming next – or even if it’s coming at all.
Well, truth be told, that sounds a bit like the first Thanksgiving.
Hollywood and artists tend to paint that first feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 as this idyllic Hallmark Hall of Fame kind of moment.
In 1969, The Brady Bunch became the first sitcom in television history to depict what was then a new trend in America: a blended family. Mike and Carol Brady, who both had three children from previous relationships, strived hard each week to – as the theme song said – “somehow form a family.” Most of the problems they faced were humorous and easy to resolve in 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, things are rarely that simple in real life.
Dad, don’t let your teenage daughter fool you. She needs you. I know her attitude may not always reflect that, but it’s true. She’s caught in a whirlwind of hormones and emotional upheaval. Her self-worth is under attack, and her social world is topsy-turvy. On top of that, she’s physically growing, changing, and feeling awkward. With you. With everybody.
Over the next few years, your daughter’s attitude will tempt you to disengage from her, to keep her at arm’s length.
November is National Adoption Month.
In the United States, there are nearly 400,000 children in the foster care system whose parents cannot safely care for them. These children need someone who will house them and provide for their basic needs.
Addressing this issue is not easy because foster care is not easy. Consider that the process always begins with a child losing a home and a family. Nevertheless, God is present in the midst of confusion.
What would you say are the most crucial ingredients to human survival? Food? Water? Shelter? Equally important is the need for hope.
The Jewish Holocaust was one of the darkest periods in human history. Over six million people were murdered in German concentration camps. Millions more barely survived horrific conditions of disease, abuse, and starvation. The misery was unbearable.
When the Allies liberated camps throughout Europe, they were shocked by what they found among the gas chambers and mass graves – drawings, writings, sheets of music, all created by prisoners.
Is it too early to start thinking about Christmas?
It’s not if you want a stress-free holiday season.
Social media raises our expectations to overwhelming levels. Instead of peace and joy, we feel pressure to transform our homes into Christmas wonderlands. Instead of peace and joy, Christmas becomes a time of stress and “stuff” for many of us, each day filled with lights, decorations, shopping, parties, or family get-togethers.
It’s all wonderful, but it also inhibits us from reflecting more deeply on the hope of Christmas – our Savior.
I’ve heard that if couples are married long enough, they start to look like one another. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I think couples do often look like the other couples they hang out with.
It may feel more comfortable to be friends with someone who’s just like you, but you’re depriving your marriage of a great chance to grow. Maybe the couple you spend the most time with is also newly married, or is raising teenagers, or is retired.
Few experiences are as comforting and connecting as a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table. Fellowship with family and giving thanks to God for His many blessings is something we look forward to in the Daly household every year.
But the holidays weren’t like that for me growing up. My mother died when I was young, and my stepfather abandoned me and my siblings, so Thanksgiving was anything but a peaceful family holiday. Mostly I remember feeling disconnected from everything that was happening around me.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
