I’m finding that even when stress is subconscious it’s still effecting my body. I wouldn’t necessarily even say I’ve felt stressed. In my head things are calm there but the past couple of years have in fact been very stressful in terms of things going on around the holiday season. My school load feels significantly lighter but it takes time and is also exposure to foreign environments. My job is good but the same is true there.
Thanksgiving for my family always takes a lot out of me but the past few years with school has taken the holidays to different levels. I toy with the idea of telling them I can no longer host, and even with my part there is plenty of help that comes from others. But anymore come November, I start to dread this time of year because of all the variables and different requirements. It feels like I have significantly cut back.
And yet I’m still here needing rest on the daily and it isn’t just “Oh I just need a quick nap.” I wrapped four presents, cleaned the bathroom, now I’m done. It’s the tightness in the chest that does go away when I take medicine but in weaker times the stress or major movement brings it back. For a while I’d gone weeks, months (?) without naps. I felt good and untired. So when it comes back I try to remember those days.
I keep seeing these posts on Instagram about sharing the holiday mental load with your partner. As in, explaining how women have all these things they are thinking about and are completely exhausted by the holiday season and expectations. The way to relieve some of this burden is for men to step up and be aware of what is going on in terms of what their wife is trying to accomplish and all of the things she is thinking about.
This in my opinion is an unrealistic expectation. There are definitely times when men need to be more aware, and anymore it’s just part of marriage these days where the two people are going to have to work out the house chores and daily functions in a way that is generally satisfactory for both parties. In my experience this distribution of labor has changed over the years and is one of those things that adjusts with the needs.
What I mean is that you can’t expect him to be the Christmas magic fairy. There are legitimate differences between men and women and as frustrating and hard to understand as it can be, allowing each other to be each other and not holding that against them is an integral part of being married. I’m not trying to be unsympathetic toward women it’s just that you can’t expect men to be our twin in mind and ability.
I say all of this as my own Christmas magic expectations have had to adjust and my husband is currently out with our two oldest boys going shopping and running errands. I have to work this weekend and have limited energy that can’t be spent at the stores. He is off work this week and typically enjoys catching up on Christmas errands and taking part in the shopping. I’ve texted him some things and he’s picking them up.
And getting our son fit for a better-sized running shoes, and finding anything else for himself that he wants. It’s different every year but this year we’re just buying our own gifts then someone can give them to us. I picked out two books, plus the recumbent bike I ordered earlier in the month was supposed to count as my present. He was getting himself some cigars and new work boots. I’m working on a Christmas menu.
Laura came over for the afternoon and evening. There is something about having an “outsider” in your presence that opens your eyes to potential patterns or habits that could use some adjustments or working on. The boys enjoy sitting and watching each other play video games. I don’t like them doing this all the time but other times I don’t even notice or care that much because I am also enjoying doing other things that I like.
But when there’s a girl over, and it’s not like it’s the first time she’s been over, there has to be some awareness that what she enjoys doing and what the boys enjoy doing may in fact be two very completely different things. So it’s important to find something that you both like doing so that you can do those things and make memories together. Even as a family, as kids have gotten older, I’ve realized that I haven’t cultivated this as much.
Both Miles and Laura’s families play games. The kids and I worked on a puzzle at the kitchen table. We used to do puzzles and then label them at the bottom with the year and who helped with the completion. It was actually fun to participate and drink our hot chocolate and have our Christmas songs playing. Zorro likes the new rug in the mud room and it makes me happy to see the kids in there too and also enjoying the space.
“And Paul said, ‘Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am–except for these chains.'” ~Acts 26:29~
The boys went down to the woodshed to get firewood. They’ve gone through so much wood this year, I think more people are driving down and taking it. I sometimes can feel a little protective of the resources because there is no official system for distributing things. Someone will ask my husband, hey I’m needing some wood for my fireplace/stove, can I come by and fill the back of my pickup?
I’ve only known of that happening once. It’s a lot of work to chop wood and I have no idea how people stayed warm through the winter. Just to take one household running would take a lot, but then you multiply that by an entire village and it seems like men would’ve had to spend half their lives chopping wood. I can’t even imagine having to cook with it or bake with it 100% of the time.
And then the forests apparently were abundant with trees that kept such wood available year after year. I don’t understand how they never ran out. Not everyone just lives right next to a forest so if you didn’t then where were you supposed to go and get your wood from? Trees wouldn’t have grown fast enough to replace themselves. Then they drove back and stacked it under the backyard stairs.
I’m starting to have dreams about getting ready for Christmas. I don’t think I’ve ever been so unprepared. The boys and I went shopping Monday but the trip itself did not last long. I imagined this fun time together driving around in the Christmas spirit. We’d stop somewhere for hot chocolate, browse some stores, get ideas for gifts and even buy some to get our collection started.
Barnes and Noble was fine but after that we were all zapped. We managed to walk into Ross and buy a rug, but no one wanted to be in there for any longer than we had to. It truly was like our souls were being drained from us. The long line, the shoppers staring blankly, the checkout people who had no spring in their step either. What in the world was going on? We ended up going home.
But I’m going to have to go back sometime. Over a month ago now I went to the doctor to do my annual checkup early and to tell the NP about some things that’d been bothering me. She ordered a CT of the pelvis and abdomen. That all came back clear except for the area where they could also see the very bottom of my lungs. I didn’t really ask for clarification about the wording.
So I had to go back and get a chest x-ray. I didn’t even tell Josh about it because I didn’t want to. But he was in the car with me when the girl from the office called back and said that it was still showing some kind of irregularity. It’s something like a haziness in the right lower lobe. So now I have to go back and get a chest CT and they will call and let me know when they’ve got it set up.
So I had a moment of being like, “Well crap. I’m dying”, and felt more mad about it then anything else. But it was only for a moment because like I’ve said, I’ve lived my life and I’m good. God has blessed me with 42 years and that’s more than many other people get to live. I’ve watched my kids go through grief and I know they’d be fine. My husband is obviously capable of handing our lives.
It’s not the way I would’ve written my story but God does not ask or give us the pen. It’s frustrating because I just want to put this behind me but then it keeps coming up with the need for more things. But in the meantime I’m going to just try to not worry about it because God says not to. The kids have finals this week before they are off for Christmas break. Ethan was done Monday.
He’s riding down with Laura’s dad to St. Louis to pick up Laura from the airport. Laura’s mom had asked if he wanted to go and so I asked him and he said sure. I told him he might as well start getting to know his (potentially future) in-laws a little more and start the process of building memories with them. I believe that every day is special and I try to live my life in a way that reflects that.
“For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” ~Acts 24:5~
Multiple times throughout the book of Acts you see references to the Pharisees or religious leaders being jealous. It is the jealousy in their hearts that prompts them to act wrongly against the apostles. When crowds were drawn, when people listened, when there were messages being preached against their own protected messages, that’s when it mentions that they were jealous. It almost makes me feel sorry for them.
Like, they had nothing to be threatened by. I feel like it’s important that this jealousy is mentioned because otherwise you might be able to think that they were just being zealous for their old religion. You can kind of understand being protective of that. You can understand them wanting to defend their truth. But somewhere they must have known that they were profiting from this arrangement where they are the truth keepers.
So I think these leaders are an example of how sinful corruption plays out. Good leadership wants freedom for others, not burdens. The yoke Jesus offers is light compared to the burden that the Pharisees offered which was heavy. When we talk about picking up our crosses and following Jesus I wonder if he counted crosses in the definition of yoke. Wouldn’t that be something? That Jesus makes our crosses lighter.
“When we are in the grips of illness, a major focus in our mind is the hope of getting back to where we were before this sickness began. But we are not meant to go back.” ~Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow~
I completely miss the fact sometimes that God isn’t aiming to tweak our lives or even amend our lives, but rather his desire is to give us new lives.
New hearts. New minds. And in this process he becomes like a stranger, not because he doesn’t love you or because you don’t know him, but because
We don’t recognize his coming, and at the same he is there with you, saying, that this person you’re looking for, he’s not in the past. He’s in the future.
For whatever reason today I couldn’t get warm. My son and I went out to the store and shopped, bringing everything back to take over to the Christian Growth Center. It was the kind of weather that causes you to label it as the worst, minus of course some kind of hurricane or anything else severe. It was cold and rainy, grey and cold.
Tonight we went over to my mother-in-law’s for supper. She invited us over to help with Christmas decorations. She’d bought a new tree for the upstairs and her sister had given her an old tree for her downstairs. The tree she had in the old house got pitched when we were tossing things into the dumpster. We had a good time decorating.
Ethan had a race this evening. They had an early bird home meet for their indoor track season. It was happening on our way out to Grandma’s so the kids watched the race in the car from my phone. After supper we watched it on the tv. This time he did the 3000M because he wants to get better at longer races. He got just over 10.
“The Paul answered, ‘What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.'” ~Acts 21:13~
The Joyful Hearts overnight is happening this weekend. I still need to get some apples and oranges for their bags. Dad and the kids are currently over there, minus the one who’s here to help with the dog. All of our kids have ended up volunteering early though the recommended age for doing so is being in high school. Number one, they’ve needed the help, and number two, they’ve seemed mature enough to do so.
My daughter was the only one, who in retrospect, was too young. I think we sent her around fourth or fifth grade and then for several years she preferred to not go back. The double-edged sword of being a conscientious child (or a smart child, or a handy child…) is that people expect things on you. They seek you out for those ways in which you’re gifted but then you inevitably cannot live up to often other expectations.
I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m thinking of it strictly as a personal parenting reflection and not how I was in any way raised. It’s not that kids have disappointed me, it’s more like they’ve helped me to see where I didn’t fully grasp or understand how kids grow. Not that I fully do now but when you have backward time to examine then you can appreciate each one’s journey of where they’ve been and where you have too.
“And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and their evil spirits came out of them.” ~Acts 19:11-12~
The boys are sleeping and it’s currently snowing. We keep getting these light dustings of snow but nothing that completely covers the ground or stays long. Paul’s been all over the place on his missionary journeys and he was breaking my heart this morning with his talk to this particular group of believers that they would not see his face again in this life. I love Paul, but the grief he bears, and the way he just continues on–it’s too much.
It just makes me grateful for the apostles God sent and worked through in order to “get the ball rolling” so to speak. These people like Paul are ones you admire so much but would never want to be them because of everything they went through. I was trying to think of any times when Paul complained about his role and I could not think of any.
There is the thorn that he asked for God to remove. But it seems like any other time he is simply calling on God that he might be found worthy of the call he’s received and faithful to complete it until whenever God is finished with him.
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