This year I felt as if,beginning the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and ending Christmas night, I was running at full speed. As well as the normal tasks and responsibilities I have, there were special things to do. Besides parties and holiday events, there was extra cleaning, shopping, planning and cooking. This is true every year, but this year for some reason seemed extra hectic. I felt as if I was always thinking three steps ahead, and never felt as if I had a handle on anything. My world is chaotic on a good day, and the extra holiday preparations magnified that. I hope I can calm the inner chaos I feel, thereby taming the outer chaos I see.
Each of our Christmas decorations were placed among the chaos that exists every day. I often think that it would be nicer to pack away the everyday things and have a picture perfect house for the holidays; but life isn't picture perfect. It's hectic and disjointed and sloppy, and it seems right, somehow, that this is how we decorate every year. It's fitting our beliefs, our faith, into our everyday lives that's the challenge, isn't it? If that is so, then I seem to be doing a fair job of it. It's likely that at some point in the next few months I'll notice a decoration that we forgot to put away, and I'll leave it, not wanting to stop what I'm doing to put it away. But maybe they are seemingly forgotten because I need occasional reminders that the spirit of Christmas is needed year round. Maybe I need reminders that joy, and love, and wonder are ever present in our lives if we only tune into them more, as we do at Christmas time. Fitting these things into the chaos of our lives is something we need to do all year, not just for one month of it.
With the turning of the calendar upon us, our thoughts turn to how the year that's ending was, and how we hope the year ahead will be. Some people make resolutions for the year ahead, things they want to improve in themselves. I don't do that, but I do reflect on things that happened in the past year and think if I handled things as well as I could have. The desire to improve ourselves, and in turn our lives, feels like putting hope and faith into action. So maybe those forgotten decorations are reminders to us throughout the year that we take the spirit of that time, especially the hopefulness, with us as we go forward in our efforts to grow into better versions of ourselves.
