Thanksgiving: A time to be thankful for second chances

Thanksgiving is upon us. The forgotten holiday. More and more, people are skipping straight from Halloween to Christmas. Take the holiday candies for example. Halloween has Reese’s Peanut Butter pumpkins. Christmas has Reese’s Peanut Butter trees. Thanksgiving… nothing! Notta! Zilch! You couldn't find a Reese’s Peanut Butter turkey should you look in every Walmart invented.
The radio stations are already playing Christmas music. This morning, I listened to White Christmas in flip-flops and short britches. There are inflatable Santa Clauses in the yards of my neighbors. Businesses throughout town have so many twinkle lights in their bushes that I almost called the fire department. I thought the buildings were on fire.
Thanksgiving has been held hostage by Black Friday and reruns of Rudolph. We rush our gatherings and dinners, so we can max out our credit cards. Instead of stretchy pants for eating, we are picking out good running shoes to beat the other shoppers to flatscreens that are the size of a Buick. The dinner table has been taken over by a spread of sale papers that makes it look like we are strategizing to invade a foreign country. Instead, our plans tell us that the comforter sets are ten bucks cheaper at the mall than that other store down the road.
Thanksgiving used to be  centered around cholesterol, cousins and afternoon naps. Families would gather and act like they liked each other. We would learn of our aunt’s bursitis flare-ups. Discussions of bad backs, busted transmissions and Uncle Charlie’s early release from lockup.
“Did you hear that Tommy beat the bottle?” You may hear someone ask. “He’s a whole different person.”
“I’m so proud of him,” a reply may come. “He now only breaks out the Wild Turkey for Baptist revivals and Iron Bowls.”
Thanksgiving was the perfect gathering for family news to be shared. Birth announcements and weddings were always headliners. Women would discuss those who were absent. You could hear things such as, “Ruth Ann sure looked good at her wedding.”
“She sure did! Much better than her previous three.”
“You could barely tell that was a maternity dress.”
At Thanksgiving, the food spread was so good it required a medical waiver to be signed. The women of our family were bonafide kitchenologists. Watching them twirl around a kitchen was pure poetry. It looked like synchronized square-dancing balanced by cast iron skillets. They would move with such fluid motions that it almost looked as if a culinary puppet master controlled their every move.
And the food. My goodness… the food! You wouldn’t find anything brought in that had been cooked with ingredients that required preservatives. Everything was homemade and had to be eaten within twenty-four hours. There were no KFC boxes, or Edward’s Pies, and nobody knew who General Tso was. White Lily ruled the roost. Golden Eagle syrup was a staple. The dressing had sage in it, and if you mentioned stuffing, a gasp would fill the room and silence would follow.
To me, that will always be Thanksgiving. It will be getting up and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It will be meeting my cousins at the door. It will be eating some of the best food outside of the laminated menu delicacy of a Waffle House.
Thanksgiving will always be about family, laughter and gossip. It will be about listening to men in overalls tell stories from a porch. It will be about our moms yelling at us to not ruin our school britches when a football game breaks out. Thanksgiving to me is about just that... being thankful.
Over the course of my life, what I am most thankful for has changed as I’ve seasoned. As a kid, of course, we are thankful for bikes, friends and Captain Kangaroo. As teens, we become thankful for cars, forgiving parents and doors that don’t squeak when you sneak in late.
As adults, we become thankful that the bills are paid. We are thankful for employment, roofs over our heads and groceries in the fridge. We give thanks for our children, their health and for Wi-Fi parental controls.
But I have grown quite thankful for something else also. Something that wouldn’t have  even crossed my mind twenty years ago. I am thankful for second chances. I have been given a second chance at many things in my life. I feel like over and over that the Good Lord above has stopped calling them second chances for me, and just calls them another chance.
I fail often. I slip up. I make bad choices on a daily basis. But still, this thing called Grace allows me to keep coming back into my lane. So many times, a second chance has pulled me out of the ditch, and for that, I am thankful.
Second chances are like little miracles. I don’t know how, or why second chances even happen. But they do. Second chances couldn’t care less what others think. Second chances don’t belong to anyone but who they were invented for. They don’t care if you put sugar in cornbread or use instant powder to make banana pudding… although both are wrong. Second chances don’t even bother to get worked up over it.
My life has been built on second chances. I have been favored by people that shouldn’t give me any hope, but they did. I have been given opportunities on assignments that I had already screwed up once. I was once even allowed back into a ballpark after calling an ump a name that would make my deceased grandmother come back from the hereafter and wash my mouth out with lye soap.
But my biggest second chance came when doctors told me to get my affairs in order. When the word cancer showed up at my doorstep, I kissed my finances goodbye and started making a list of which friends got my stuff. My fishing tackle and my Dale Earnhardt collectibles were tough choices. It takes special friends to assume such responsibility.
I carried with me not one… not two… but three types of cancer. I endured fourteen surgeries in just under two years. My bank account went anemic. My strength dwindled to that of two-pound test line. But something else happened. Parts of me became stronger. My faith being the most important. And I asked God for a second chance. He offered me one, just like he does so many others.
I am thankful for that chance. I get to spend this holiday season doing the things I love, like watching my family smile and eat themselves into food comas. I get to enjoy Christmas trees that were put up while mosquitoes were still traveling in flocks. I am thankful that I have been given a second chance in life. Perhaps I’ll do things better. Maybe I will appreciate the little things that I was once blind to. Maybe I’ll start being more thankful for a lot of things, and less judgmental about even more.
I wish I could give this feeling of a second chance to everyone. But I can’t. It doesn’t work that way. I would never want you to go through what I did to feel this way, but I promise, should you get just a sprinkle of this feeling, it would change everything. And you’d be so much more Thankful.
This Thanksgiving will be a special one. It's one that some said I wouldn’t see. It is more than just a holiday. It is much deeper than food, naps and a day off from work. This Thanksgiving to me is about understanding that even though I don’t deserve it, I still get a second chance at this thing we call life.
When everything in life goes wrong, we can still be thankful for the things that keep us from giving up. We can be thankful for sunrises, backroads and largemouth bass. We can be thankful for friends, family and gatherings around dinner tables.
Don’t let this day slip by. Thanksgiving should be high on your list of things you look forward to. It is a time to reflect on everything that makes you happy. And in that time, it is an opportunity to thank the Fella who made it all possible.
And by His Grace, we can be thankful for second chances.

(Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Russell L. Estes is a Brilliant native who grew up reading the Journal Record. He wrote this column specially for us and our readers and we are SO GRATEFUL he has had a second chance to share his amazing work with the world. In 2022, on his 50th birthday, Russell was diagnosed with melanoma, and later with lymphoma and renal cell carcinoma. He gives all the glory to God for his miraculous healing, recovery and ongoing blessings as he journeys through life.)