Thanksgiving Reflections
By Lilly Mazzocchi
2023 has been the hardest year of my life, but also the year filled with the most love, celebration, and achievement. It has shown me there is no growth without pain and no wisdom without trial and tribulation. It taught me the value of walking away from things I tried my best to hold on to, and how to wholeheartedly accept what crossed my path. I’ve learned there is beauty in living for yourself, and choosing what’s best for you after giving all that you can.
This year has been a lesson in thankfulness—for everything that’s happened and for what is yet to come.
Lesson one: growth. Personal growth is a beautiful and necessary part of life. It presents itself in many ways and will always demand temporary discomfort. It could packing up and moving to a new city or a career pivot. Maybe it’s someone showing up in your life out of nowhere who challenges your plans and makes you rethink everything you thought you wanted. It could be choosing yourself. God intentionally allows us to go through difficult times. Times that make us think longer and harder than we did before because it's for our own good. These moments test us and our strength and shape us into who we are. They give us a story far greater than we could have imagined. Philippians 1:6 tells us, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.” Remaining complacent in the present is a choice we can make every day but God puts desires in our hearts for a reason. Maybe we are supposed to change directions.
Lesson two: love. We could not love without God first cultivating it in our hearts. He directs us to love those around us, to connect with those we feel deeply for, and to submit ourselves to what makes us feel most alive and connected to Him. “We love because He first loved us,” said 1 John 4:19.
Of everything we have the power to feel and know, love is by far the greatest and most absolute. It is patient and it is kind. We cannot always control our paths and who crosses them, but that’s what makes life beautiful. We will never look back and regret loving someone too much or caring for them in a way we never have before. We should be thankful for all the people we have met who are a part of our stories, and for the ones we have yet to meet.
Lesson three: respect. There are many people in this world whose true colors are simply not on our color wheel. They believe that to feel content, they need to be argumentative. They think that to be brave they must be cruel. There are individuals who are loud when speaking behind someone’s back and are silent to their face. A truly content woman recognizes the power of being humble and soft-spoken, and harnesses the intellect required for self-control.
Everyone should have standards for themselves and others. There are people you will meet who will not reciprocate the respect you show, and they do not deserve a seat at your table. We can give what we can to others, but there comes a time when you must choose how much you are weighed down or lifted up.
In life, there isn’t much we know for certain and so much of it is left to interpretation. Take in what you know, believe people when they show you who they are, and be thankful for the lesson. Half the battle to figuring out what we do want, is seeing what we don’t.
Lesson four: thankfulness. Have you ever wondered why something happened in your life? Have you ever taken a step back and tried to decipher the lesson you’re supposed to learn from it? There isn’t always a point to be proven, or something we could have done better, or different. We don’t have too much of a say in what happens in our lives, but we can accept the greater plan in store for all of us. The longer we try to be in the driver’s seat of our own lives, the longer we put off what God has planned for us. Despite the trials of life, we should still choose to endure them. They are the days we live for. They show us how far we have come, and where we’re going.
Lilly Mazzocchi is a columnist at The Conservateur, a recent graduate of Texas A&M University, and a Masters Candidate at the GW Elliott School of International Affairs.
