looking ahead to Christmas and realizing I’m so behind on everything
I never shared these wonderful family photos our dear friend Emily Rumsey took over the summer. I mean, it’s only NOVEMBER 30! I also just ordered some Christmas cards so hopefully they’ll arrive before Christmas so I can get them mailed out before Valentines? Sheesh.
With all the bustle and hustle of my sister’s Thanksgiving weekend wedding (YAY! SHE MARRIED THE BEST GUY and we are so HAPPY) and ensuing disease: all 10 little nieces and nephews threw up over the course of the week they were visiting, I actually had some quiet time to think. Maybe it’s because I was up a few nights changing sheets and rubbing backs while people threw up and that doesn’t lend to much talking which is my preferred way of processing.
I’m so behind on everything. I didn’t get anything ready for a Small Biz Saturday or Cyber Monday sale for my shop. I haven’t blogged in a long time. I haven’t planned out anything for Christmas yet. I feel so BEHIND.
And yet in those semi-still hours of realizing all my time and creative energy had gone toward the thing that really mattered: my sister’s wedding! prepping food for a few meals of 40 people for the festivities after it (freezer friendly meals)! rearranging my third floor and basement to accommodate the highly anticipated cousin crew! Blessed is She work that needed to be done before I took a week or so off! Paying attention to my children and their homework assignments and projects and recitals and booboos and teething and desires to potty train!
Once again, it hit me: if I do what I should and ought so that I’m not behind on what actually matters, the time will somehow manifest itself to do the extra stuff. And, if somehow that time doesn’t manifest itself, I must be aging and maturing enough to let them go. My little special me-time things are nourishing and soothing and joyful, but they’re not the meat and potatoes of my heart. And when they have been, I’m not balanced nor actually satisfied.
So if you are also scurrying and feel so behind, whether that’s literally like no way Christmas cards are happening or more like everyone else has these happy full lives that are perfect and I’m not there, please know you’re not alone. And that the best antidote I’m finding for this ache of “behindedness” is to do what is in front of me, and then ask God ever so patiently for extra time or grace to be filled up in the little cracks and crevices of the day.