Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Take time to embrace your family, drink the deep air, turn small and large moments into prayer, and celebrate the gifts of God, no matter your present circumstance.

“I believe in a life of celebration. I believe that the world we wake up to every day is filled to the brim with deep, aching love, and also with hatred and sadness. And I know which one of those I want to win in the end. I want to celebrate in the face of despair, dance when all we see on the horizon is doom…when (Death) comes for me, I want to be full-tilt, wide-open, caught in the very act of life. I think that’s what we’re here for, not for a passive, peaceful life, but to stand up in the face of all that lacks peace and demand more…God gives us something amazing when he gives us life, and I want to live with gratitude…It’s rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to choose to dance, to choose to love your life. It’s much easier and much more common to be miserable…I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes…I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift…Because we were made for motion, for arching up toward God with all the energy and passion of a thunderstorm, lightning slicing through a sleepy world to remind us that we serve a fast-dancing God, a God who set this world whirling…Let’s sizzle and pop in his name. Let’s dance and shimmer and scrawl out our stories across the sky, like he taught us to. Let’s echo his words, and let our lives speak those words: It is good.”

— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: