{"id":7108,"date":"2015-11-25T20:36:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T01:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7108"},"modified":"2015-11-25T20:36:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T01:36:41","slug":"7108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7108","title":{"rendered":"The road to Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nThanksgiving at the home of Earle Landis, Neffsville, PA, 1942. Photo by Marjorie Collins. This was just eight years before my birth. I am that old.<\/em><\/p>\n

My heart has greatly desired this Thanksgiving.<\/strong> Not because of my fitting gratefulness; heaven knows I\u2019m as ungrateful as the next man, and a lot more ungrateful than that other guy next to him. No, this holiday season has been a benchmark for me ever since I started graduate school. By Christmas I\u2019ll be done with classes (assuming I don\u2019t flunk one unexpectedly), and even now the pace is slowing down. Neither of my instructors seems all that interested in cramming work into the last couple weeks. I\u2019m essentially done with my labors for one class, and the other doesn\u2019t have a lot left except the final test. That will be annoying, but there\u2019s nothing I can do through anxious care to make its span a cubit less.<\/p>\n

So here I am, on the verge of being done with the bulk of it (the question of a Capstone Project remains up in the air), breathing afar off the balmy zephyrs of liberty. For more than two years I\u2019ve been squeezing my life into whatever spaces the academic template overlooked. Soon I\u2019ll have evenings free again. I\u2019ll be able to relax (a bit) on weekends. And \u2013 praise to the Almighty \u2013 I\u2019ll be able to work on my novels again. I even sat down the other night and wrote a scene that had impressed itself on my mind. It\u2019s an important scene, one that reveals the heart of a major character, and should guide my portrayal.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m thankful. Frankly, thinking back, there were long bleak stretches when I didn\u2019t see how I could get this far. Either I\u2019d fail or the stress would kill me, I figured. As with so many things in life, the Lord\u2019s iron purpose was to make me walk through it, get stronger, and learn what I was capable of. Wasn\u2019t it Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof<\/em> who asked the Lord to please not bless him so much?<\/p>\n

Have a blessed Thanksgiving. I expect I\u2019ll be hanging around here a bit more from now on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving at the home of Earle Landis, Neffsville, PA, 1942. Photo by Marjorie Collins. This was just eight years before my birth. I am that old. My heart has greatly desired this Thanksgiving. Not because of my fitting gratefulness; heaven knows I\u2019m as ungrateful as the next man, and a lot more ungrateful than that … Continue reading The road to Thanksgiving<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[1102,2761],"class_list":["post-7108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-graduate-school","tag-thanksgiving"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}