Holiday A-ha’s

I’m sitting on my couch with a fire in the fireplace and a little dusting of snow on the ground outside the windows that surround me. It’s the first week of January and all the work (I call it work but honestly I love it….more on that at another time:) is over. The cleaning, shopping, decorating, cooking and then more cleaning and taking down of said decorations, places a period on this season together. And as I sit here in a ponderous mood, with pink eye and a sore throat, contemplating all that the holiday celebration and time with my kiddos included, I have some thoughts that may feel helpful for some of you. Hence this blog:) Whether you have kids that are small, or middle, or all grown and have flown the nest, I think there may be some crossover points of interest if you stick with me.

First off, not that I’m an expert, but this whole holiday season thing isn’t new for me. I’ve been practicing family celebrations with my own family for almost 35 years now, but the gentle, ponderous piece around my heart is a fairly new practice. I’ve always loved the new year in terms of evaluating and thinking about where I’m headed and what I’d like it to look like, but this year I decided to take a pause and reflect on our time together and see what bubbled up out of my heart, rather than just plan with my head, and there are some things I noticed that cannot be understated as pretty amazing moments.

[Sidenote:  For those who follow me on social media, you know that this year I’ve decided to trek through the Psalms, and have invited you to come along as well. Honestly, you’re probably getting sick of me inviting you to join, but that feels like a you problem, not a me problem. Haha——-but really, you can still join me if you want! *insert winky face)

Aaannnnyyyway….one of the things that I’ve already noticed just a few days into this journey, is how the Psalmist plants along the way that short little word, Selah. You may already know this, but that word invites you to stop and listen. To pause, pay attention, and meditate on what you’ve just read.  Isn’t that cool?!! It’s a decided stop, that makes room for your thoughts and carves out space to hear the Holy Spirit, as you read the words of the Psalmist.]

So, that’s what I’m doing….I’m Selah’ing:) So you mom’s out there, if your kiddos come up to you and ask what you’re doing, I just gave you a new explanation to give them as you stop and pay attention.

Ok, back to the observations….

Although our home is smaller and our family is bigger, its full of the same amazing humans that I call my own (even if they do belong to their own families now:)…once a momma, always a momma. Can I get an amen?!! I’m honestly blown away at how every single time I get to see their faces, my heart literally skips a beat. I’m awestruck at who they are and that I get the gift of being their momma forever.

I digress…back to the story.

In order to help set the scene of our time together, let me explain. For the past few years, because we now live in a different state than our kids, they spend Christmas with the other side of their families in Washington, and then the day after Christmas they head south to spend the 26th through the New Year with us. As much as I hate spending Christmas without them, it makes it so worth it when they do get here and we get extended time with each of them.

(Unfortunately David and his fam didn’t get to join us this year)

But when we began to prepare for this year, Mike and I decided that we were gonna do a “Cowboy Christmas” when they came. I have no idea how it came to be, other than we went to Cash & Carry and saw a ginormous Beef Brisket and we both must have been hungry at the time, so we chose to buy it and use it for Christmas and create a whole theme around a piece of meat. I know, sounds crazy right?! So, we texted the kids and they agreed it sounded fun!

Fast forward to last week when we dressed up in our best cowboy attire, ate brisket, Mac and Cheese, baked beans and rolls, WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!!

I don’t know what it is about dressing up and being silly together but we all agreed, it was the best! We didn’t have a competition on costumes, but if we had, I’m sure Andrew probably would have won, with his rhinestone Cowboy get-up!

In fact, we had so much fun that we decided that we’re doing themed Christmas from here on out! We’ll be spending 2024 watching for next year’s theme.

Unfortunately as our time together went on, a few of them got sick, Tate had to fly home for a work appointment for a couple of days, and the weather was not at all what we had hoped for. There’s also the changing dynamic of growing families with pregnancies, babies schedules and less opportunity for spontaneity. All this could have easily turned our sweet time into loss and disappointment. But here’s the thing, I’ve been learning (for about the last 10 years), that I can hold more than one emotion at a time, and one doesn’t negate the other. There’s room to be sad that we had rain and clouds instead of beautiful snow and that we had to say goodbye to the seasons where we stayed up late, with the music as loud as we wanted while playing games. And, we can still hang onto the joy of simply being together without a schedule, eating whenever we wanted, laying around on the couch and going for walks. (Even if it did take a work of God to get us all out the door at the same time:) It’s both. Letting go of what was, and embracing what is. It gets clumsy when it’s new, but we’ll get better and better over time.

So, with all that being said, here are just a few of the things that bubbled up in my heart that I noticed as I Selah’d…

Different can just be different. It doesn’t have to mean bad

Life is full of seasons, seasons bring change, and change isn’t bad, it’s just different. In this season, my kids are parents… tired parents. And it doesn’t feel as worth it to stay up late like we used to playing games and sharing a couple of adult beverages. I missed that part, but the upside is I sure did get good sleep this year——and we did get to play games, it was just generally before 7pm when bedtime prep began. 

(Also, if you’ve never played BANK before, I highly recommend it! It’s pretty simple and easy to figure out. You get the app on your phone and you need two dice.)

The next thing I noticed is…

I’m learning, and doing a fairly good job of, letting discomfort lead me to praying, rather than fixing or fretting

Of course when you have 8 adults and 4 kiddos, running around each other for week there’s gonna be some tense spots, even if you do love one another. Life is just that way, right? I feel like this year, more than ever, I was able to sit in the discomfort of open disagreements with their spouses, undercurrents of frustration, and disappointments about weather and realize, those aren’t all mine to hold. We get to all be adults who are flawed and figuring out what it means to live with one another and love well and let disappointment sit with us, without having to manage one another. I don’t know about you, but if you’re a mom, I think you’ll feel this one with me!

But the truth is, disruptions, disagreements, and any other dis’s don’t mean we’ve done something wrong….they simply mean you’re living in real life. Life is full of all those dis’s (and of course a few others:), and I realized that I was far more grown up about how I navigated them this year—-leaving room for them to play out naturally, rather than taking them on and feeling like I’ve somehow become a disappointment to my kids. A subtle shift, with BIG rewards.

The last thing I noticed which feels like a huge comfort, is this…

Family is forever, so I don’t have to nail it every time——there’s next year, and the next and the next

This one is big! I am not the Savior of anyone and that is good news!

I am a flawed human, with the title of momma, not Jesus, who will not get things “right” every time. I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I do a pretty good job and others I don’t, and that’s ok. But perfection is not the goal, connection is. Connection with Jesus, myself and one another right inside our humanity. And as I look back I can see that we did that. Not perfectly, and we have LOTS of room to grow, but we did have spaces of honest communication and that’s a win.

You see, as I grow as a person I’m learning that my kids often have more grace for me than I have for me. The fact that they WANT to spend extended time with us regularly tells me that they have lots of room for the real me. Space to let their menopausal, emotional, starry eyed at the sight of them, momma simply hang out with them is the best gift I could ever receive! It’s the real gift and I’m forever grateful. And not just for the ones that I birthed, but those who God chose to bring into our family! It’s absolutely the riches of gifts and my heart feels full to the brim.

So, there you have it!

Nothing new or earth shaking, by any stretch of the imagination, just reminders that life is not perfect and we don’t have to own what’s not ours. So wherever you find yourself in this season, I hope and pray that you’ll be gentle with yourself as you remember back to however it was that you celebrated the New Born King. Regardless if everything went terribly, or as good as you’d hoped or somewhere in between, Jesus was right there in it, waiting to be seen and leaned into.

Immanuel, The King is in the room!

And that’s worth noticing and celebrating.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pic collages of those wonderful humans I call my very own!

Peace to you and yours!