Sharing Christmas - These are a Few of My Favorite Things - Three

The day alone. Shhh. It's a day out of the office. The day to work on the details. The house, wrapping a few gifts, sometimes cards, but really, a day to regain my footing during the busyness. The busyness of finding a concert dress and shoes and then going to the concert, and on and on.

A day to breathe a bit or catch my breath while I do some organizing of what's ahead.

It's one of my favorite things. A day where the outcome is for everyone else...and me.

How about you?

A season of tenderness

I'm reminded, speaking with several friends and spending time with my own self, this is a season that calls for tenderness. The wounds and ghosts of Christmas past, our longing for belonging and to be loved, seem to rise to the surface at this time of year.

For me, Christmas music can warm my spirit or bring me to a memory of loss. I'm aware that my awareness is higher than normal. I for one am glad. I want to see the ghosts a little clearer, question my agreements, understand what's at the base of my operating system. But none of it is easy.

Four good friends are looking at their families (of origin) and wondering if they really have to continue to behave the way they do. I'm right there with them. Faced with the family I have and love while longing to drop the messages of the past for a present of kindness and love and trust.

Magical child thinking.

Hard work for the adult I am. And in this season, I need tenderness while I'm in the midst. So, I'll stop, take the beat and decide the next behavior or response without reacting. I'll also pray, slow down to light candles and do some quiet things that warm my own heart.

And I promise, at least for this year, to be very aware, that you just might need some tenderness, too.

Now I know how my mom felt

These toes need a big bucket of water.
Yesterday, we went shopping for the Christmas Program outfit.

How many levels does Forever 21 have, I ask? Up the escalator and then back down we went, in search of a simple Christmas dress. Then, off to the rest of the mall because there wasn't a simple or darling outfit in the place. It had to be one or the other.
So we kept going.

With great wisdom, we stopped at the Nordstrom Cafe for a Caesar salad, a Coke and a chat.

All in all, a good day. With great success.
We ended up with a cute dress and and a pretty shrug.

Now the concert will be perfect.

Quotable Sunday - Charles Dickens

 

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  ~Charles Dickens