Thanksgiving has always been a special holiday for me. I always loved it when the little kids made handprint paintings of turkeys. Or when my kids were little, having them dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans for their preschool classes. I can still remember them making tom toms out of salt boxes. And I have long associated Thanksgiving with football games against the rival high school – and, of course, the traditional Dallas Cowboys game.  And turkey and stuffing and all kinds of foods with family and friends.

Some of that has changed over the years; some of it has stayed the same.

But underneath it all, one thing remains the same.  It is good to give thanks to the Lord.

Back when I worked for Weyerhaeuser Corporation, I often conversed with other salespeople around the northeastern United States. I got to know some of them very well, but I didn’t get the chance to meet them until we had a regional meeting. I had an image in my mind of what they looked like, but when I finally met them, I realized that they actually looked incredibly different than what I had imagined.

Things are not always what we expect; they are not always what they seem. What assumptions do we make that keep us from seeing people as they really are? How do our attitudes affect our perceptions?

Taylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” just dropped this week and there's one line that really caught my attention: “Everyone will betray you.”
I would guess that happens to all of us at some point in life. People will disappoint us. And we have a choice at how we're going to look at life, how we're going to deal with what's coming.
We can be like Taylor Swift’s antihero alter ego and go through life believing that everyone will betray us. On the other hand, we can go through life expecting the best of people, knowing that occasionally we'll will be disappointed, but still being able to enjoy our relationships and trust each other, even with a couple of bumps in the road from time to time.
It may not be perfect, but it beats the alternative.