December flew by again this year. It’s not a surprise and I’ve come to expect this. But each year you try to slow it down a little in order to savor the time with loved ones. I need to find the quote but somewhere in Ann Voskamp’s book 1000 gifts, she talks about time being like a river and when you step into the river you can actually slow time. Like when you slow down to be present you actually get more time.

It doesn’t pass by so quickly and you don’t end up missing it. Like most things, it isn’t perfect and there are those seeming exceptions like December, but for the most part I think she’s right that when you take time time in the moment to be more present and appreciate your life you end up living a better and fuller life. This year is a little different in that I have not been intentionally building up to Christmas Day.

Not that I intentionally build it up other years, it was just the natural result of my actions. We did do some shopping in the afternoon to where I feel better now about having presents to open. We didn’t have enough gifts for them. The thing about Christmas shopping is that you have to have at least once where you browse and look for the thing you wouldn’t have thought of. You only know when you see it.

And then you start getting ideas like, “Ooooo, they could totally play with this in the open areas of Grandma’s basement” or “Oh this would be fun for them to all play together” and then you find a little box of accessories to go with it to split up amongst the stockings. Those kinds of things only happen in stores. That was a theme of the bigger gifts this year. They were things they could play with and share.

The update on the lung thing is that now I’m being referred to a pulmonologist. They will call me back when they have something set up. I did get a more detailed wording about whatever it is but it’s still not giving me any clear answers. Obviously I’d prefer that this wasn’t some kind of cancerous lesion that’s going to end up killing me in a year or even sooner or later. I guess there is a part of me that would still want to live.