Okay, it is THAT time of the year. Yes, we are all wonderfully excited to celebrate the birth of Jesus and His wonderful gift to us. But, from Thanksgiving to New Year's day, life piles on the stress. Hold on, breathe, and remember... God never means for us to live with constant planning and worry in our heads. He wants us to trust Him and to live in the moment.
My holiday season was jump-started with my little girl having surgery, preparing an early Thanksgiving dinner for our Australian friends, and then packing to go back to the States.
I got on that plane and had to remind myself to breathe and let God have it all. It was a hard trip.
Oh, how I dearly wanted someone else to take her off my hands. When it was all said and done, getting from our friend's house in Tumbarumba, Australia to my sister's house in the States meant that I was on Mommy duty 24 hours straight with almost no sleep. Yes, my husband was there to hold her and do all those amazing things that got us through security and on the right airplane, but she was still very scared and stressed from her surgery and mostly only wanted her mom's arms.
For days, no, weeks, before this, I had gotten not even a single night of complete sleep. I had reached that ultimate depth of sleep-deprivation that I hadn't felt since Adela was a newborn. However, if I wasn't thinking about how tired I was or worrying about how I was going to get Adela used to a new time zone, life seemed so much more manageable. I made my mind focus on things like: I love the feeling of her sleeping on my shoulder. or I'm so happy that she is ok simply playing between our legs. or How blessed we are that we are getting to go home to our families for the holidays.
But, it was definitely a battle. Several times I started to get angry and frustrated. I would angrily scream inside my head that I just wanted to be alone for 15 minutes so I could feel sane again. But those thoughts did absolutely nothing for me. I knew that having the right mindset was more important than anything else in the world.
It was truly a miracle that I arrived with a smile on my face and still had a heart full of kind feeling and a mind full of warm thoughts.
But that was God. That was all Him. That was all Him working through me as He trained me to live where He placed me...to live in the now.
Lets let Him have our every moment this Holiday season. Let us embrace this time that is usually packed to the brim with whatever life throws at us and have a heart that lives in the now and enjoys the beauty of every moment.
God Bless you all. Happy Holidays!