I turned off the outdoor Christmas lights one last time, on this, the night of the 12th day of Christmas.  Christmas is but a memory and New Years, fresh in my mind. One by one, each family left us, after months of preparing for this special, once-in-a-lifetime event and celebrating family more than actual Christmas.  Although Christmas was definitely the setting.  Christmas was the decor.  Christmas was the food.  Christmas was the music and Christmas were the activities.  As I reflect on this 12th night of Christmas and realize it has all slipped through my fingers like so many other anticipated events.  The melancholy sets in.

You have no idea how much I feel like Jo March as I sit in the basement (as opposed to the attic) writing by candlelight.  I even have a juicy Christmas orange to savor. I’m wearing my plaid night shirt and feeling very Louise May Alcott-y. Enjoying a night cap that you don’t wear.
I just said goodbye to the last family who joined us for this glorious occasion. I’m talking about Christmas, of course.  We began discussing the possibility of our very large family getting together for Christmas a year ago.  We’ve tossed out pie-in-the-sky ideas like this before and never followed through but this time there seemed to be a heart connection regarding this suggestion.  I think everyone knew it was time.  This Christmas would have been twenty-five years since the last time the entire family got together to celebrate Christmas at the Banff Springs Hotel.  1994 holds some very special memories. The family has evolved over the last twenty-five years and some have gone on before us while others have joined the family either through marriage or birth.  It is poignant to think about the ones that passed and joyous to think of those added.  Twenty-seven out of a possible forty-four  people gathered here in Calgary for Christmas.
So much expectation. So much planning.  So many decisions to be made. SO many logistics. So much anticipation. As brothers and sisters and cousins and grandchildren started arriving, our emotions were rising to a feverish pitch.  This was really happening.  We pulled it off.  Never perfection and not always as planned but everyone doing their best and bringing what they could to the table (literally).  We had Kiwi’s that wanted snow and wanted to see the mountains.  We had those that claimed it was all about the food (and there was not shortage of it – thank you Lord).  For some it was about the games and the movies and the music and lights.  While still others just came so they could be part of the ‘greatest Christmas pageant ever’.  Alright, no one actually came for that but we did it anyway.  A huge incentive for our gathering was our eighty-seven year old mother.  She stills works and just came back from an adventure in Australia and will probably outlive us all in-spite of the fact that she keeps telling us she may not make it to another Christmas.
This Christmas wasn’t about presents.  It wasn’t about ambiance.  God knows – He does –  that I tried to make it about ambiance but I got a quick education about the reality of six small children in our midst.  It wasn’t a competition.  It wasn’t a fashion show.  It wasn’t about keeping up with the Jones and ‘what’s everyone else doing?’.  It was simply about gathering together with family.  It was about loving and accepting.  It was about joy and peace on earth and good will toward men.  It was about enjoying each other’s company and having fun and catching up on all the happenings in our lives. To bring us up to speed regarding our hopes and dreams and mistakes.  We all make them, don’t we?  No one lost their cool or left early in a huff. It was about late night talks and sleeping through Christmas movies together.  I think we managed to get everyone that wanted to go, to the mountains.  The eggnog was flowing.  The Star Wars waffles sizzling.  The tobogganing run packed and exciting. The butter tarts plentiful – yes, have two or three.  Spruce Meadows seen.  Carcassone and Dutch Blitz  and Quirkle played. We were more stuffed than the turkey.  We didn’t forget the cranberries in the fridge this year.  Booked entire rows of seats at the movie theatre.  Kiwi’s skating in subzero temperatures and crying because they could not feel their extremities any longer.  And of course, Starbucks.

Star Wars, Starbucks, Star of the East.

And now…its over.  For another year.  For another decade.  For another lifetime.  But worth every expensive, testy, freezing, bloated, stressful, loud, and magical moment.

December 15th.  Ten days until  Christmas. Our first out of town guests have arrived.  Actually, our first overseas guest would be more accurate. I’ve just pulled two huge roasters of nut and bolts out of the oven and spread the carmel corn out on cookie sheets.  This really IS Christmas.  Ten days until the big day.  I know I probably sound like a stuck record,  but is the big day really the BIG day?  Christmas is now.  I just read a short writing on Advent and what it means.  We are in advent.  It is a waiting period but it is a time unto itself.  It means ‘a coming into place’.   Christmas, to me, really is all about advent.  Life, for me, is all about advent.  A coming into place.  What exactly is it that I am waiting for?  That is the $64 question.
Very often we can turn our whole lives into a waiting period.  Waiting to live when I have a full bank account.  Waiting to enjoy that vacation or event when I lose 20 pounds.  Waiting for someone else to make a move so you can get on with life.  Waiting until your husband and kids finally ‘get it’ (or ‘get me’).  Waiting for the right job to come along. Waiting for someone to discover you and all your talents.  Waiting for life to take a turn for the better while I sit there and do nothing to help myself.  Waiting in line at the supermarket.  Waiting in a traffic jam.  Waiting until your paycheque is deposited.  Waiting for that perfect ‘one’.  Waiting for the rain to stop or the temperature to rise.  Waiting for the cookies to bake.  Waiting for a  toddler to catch up to you.  Waiting for that same toddler to grow up and fulfill all your hopes and dreams.  Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.
For the Christ follower, Advent signifies waiting for Christ to return, just as they were waiting for the Savior – a King,  all those years ago.  They didn’t even recognize him when he arrived and very often we don’t recognize the object of our waiting when it arrives either. Because it ends up not looking like what we thought it would.  And then we need to have a paradigm shift to embrace that thing. By a purely worldly definition, Advent is waiting for Christmas.   Waiting for the big day.  And I feel that the big day can be very anticlimactical and that is why I live Christmas all of December. Because most of the fun and the joy and the peace on earth, good will toward men happens before December 25th.  December 25th is just the day that most of surround ourselves in an embarrassment of riches and food and have a couple of huge messes to clean up later – the wrapping and the dishes…and that doesn’t thrill me at ALL.
So here we are on the cusp of Christmas Day.  I still have a million things to do to make the magic come to life before all the guests arrive.  And by guests, I mean family.  I have a large family and as many as possible, as many as it was practical and doable, are arriving in the next week to gather together to celebrate Christmas.  And it won’t be about gifts and getting – its going to be about gathering and loving.  Its going to be about reminiscing and reliving our childhoods (sorry millennials) but we old folks need to have our fun too.  Keep your ears open – you just may learn something valuable.
So as I am up to my earlobes in the doing, I am being mindful of what I expect and what my purpose is. I am taking time to enjoy the season and to let go of lofty expectations that just ruin everything for everybody.  In the middle of making waffles, with whip cream and fruit for our first overnight guests and seeing them out the door as they go to the mountains for a few days before the rest of the family arrive,  I decided to stop at Chapters with a Starbucks to take some time to breath before I went home to make peanut brittle, carmel corn, nuts and bolts, shortbreads and finish 3 more quilts and make a live square wreath for my front entrance.  Who needs sleep?
I am also trying to be mindful of why I am doing all these things, while at the same time remind myself that the minute it all becomes too much then that means I am doing too much. Its  so easy to keep inventing things to do and coming up with more and more ideas (at least it is for me) and keep adding things to my TODO list and totally miss out on all the fun of advent.  The waiting is over now.  Ready or not Christmas is upon us.  After talking about this event since January of this year (actually the idea was hatched Christmas Day last year right here in my own living room as I was skyping with other family members), it is here.  The first guests from New Zealand have arrived.  Tomorrow I go to deck out the guest house for the overflow and on it goes.  I will take time each day to have a quiet few moments (or an hour) and just breath and be mindful and grateful and keep things in perspective.
Its not to late for you.  There are still 10 days left.  Take a breather  each of the remaining 10 days and remind yourself why you are celebrating Christmas in the first place and what this season means to you.  How can you enjoy it?  What can you be grateful for?  How can you bless others? And what do you need to let go of.  Breathe.  Breathe deeply.  Light a candle.  Have a luxuriating bath.  Go to Starbucks with a friend.  Take an hour to sip your favorite beverage.  Look at some magazines.  Read a book.  Donate some time at Samaritans purse or the Mustard seed or make a donation.  Help someone less fortunate than yourself.  It puts things into perspective. Take a nap.  Yes,  in the craziness of all that needs to be done – take a nap.  Your loved ones will thank you for it.   Its free and one of the most decadent things you can do.  (maybe not if you are the husband and your wife is running around like a chicken with her head cut off – be discerning, after all.  You could get shot or strangled during your nap.  LOL).
And remember, we are all waiting for something.  Its not just you.  We are all in this together.
Peace on earth and good will toward men.

Hi.  My name is Geri Stewart and I’m a sugaraholic. I have turned myself into an addict.  High fructose corn syrup, honey, fructose, raw sugar, molasses dextrose, glucose, fruit juice concentrate, malt sugar, lactose, maltose, sucrose, white refined sugar, brown sugar…you name it, I’m addicted.   The defining moment came the other day when I was standing in front of the pantry desperate for something sweet.  I looked inside and, thankfully, I’m not stocking anything sweet in there – short of ingesting an actual tablespoon of brown sugar.  I didn’t want cookies or cake (not that I had any of those).  I didn’t even want chocolate – which I had.  I didn’t want ice cream – which I had. I had butter tarts in the freezer but that’s not what I was looking for either. I wanted hard core sugar.  Bring on the jelly beans, the jube jubes, the hot tomales.  I remembered that I had seen my son with a bag of hot tamales when he was unpacking from his vacation and I thought, maybe I should go up there and snafu a few hot tomales.  Then I asked myself, has it come to this?  That I am going to go sneak up to my son’s room and poke around through his stuff and eat his hot tamales?  (Well I would be saving him from them in reality – mothers make those kinds of sacrifices for their kids).  Think of the movie Chocolat, when the vicar is found passed out in a chocolate coma in the chocolate shop window.  I’d have been discovered passed out in a drunken hot tamales stupor with a burnt tongue and red water running down my face.  They say that addicts steal money from their family to buy drugs, unless – of course, they can steal the actual drugs.  A sad state of affairs.  I did not go up and look for the hot tomales, btw.  That would have been the last frontier.

I always used to have a savory tooth.  If you offered me a bag of chips or a chocolate bar, I would always go for the bag of chips.  Since the – ahem – change of life, I started going for the chocolate bar.  And don’t even get me started on the sugary Starbucks drinks I love so much.  The other night, the same day I was looking for the hot tomales, I went back for a refill on my Venti Peach Green Tea Lemonade.  Very satisfying.  I have never done that.  The guilt.  I felt as if I had lost control and handed my health over to my pathology.

But then yesterday, during my lunch hour, I am reading one of the many health magazines I have purchased recently.  I have been going through them with a fine tooth comb (aka a red pen and a yellow highlighter) and learning about everything I am doing wrong.  I’ve read many articles on gut health and have red lined almost every word as I read about inflammation.  My body is a raging inferno of inflammation.  I know it.    Then I read another article in Dr. Oz’s magazine about cutting sugar out of your life and how to do it and why you should do it.  Its not like I hadn’t already read Dr. Amen’s brain health book on what sugar does to your brain and how it speeds up aging.  Let me tell you, I am seeing the ravages of this addiction.  But when I read Dr. Oz’s article yesterday something in me snapped. Thank you Dr. OZ.   I was quitting sugar.  I’ve been taking all the supplements that my naturopath has recommended.  And she has strongly advised that I follow my food sensitivities results.  No gluten, no dairy, no celery (yes celery), no corn (obvious but not easy, since I considered popcorn one of the food groups), no brewers yeast (no alcohol – not hard for me) and no bakers yeast (no breads or any kinds – or cinnamon buns).  Kill me now.   But I had a revelation yesterday – it’s the sugar that is messing with me and weighing me down (literally).  Its all about the sugar.

One of the first things to go….my daily, morning sugar drink from Starbucks.  I can’t even.  How am I going to do this?  One day at a time.  I did NOT stop at Starbucks this morning.  I filled up my fancy water bottle (with water)  and just drove straight to work.  However, I reasoned, if I’m not going to have sugar then I better have some healthy fats to keep me going. Killing two birds with one stone. Nix the sugar, add the healthy fats.

This is going to be a journey but I know I can do it.  I’m in charge of me.  Nobody was forcing all that sugar down my throat.  It was me, willingly and unlovingly and obsessively,  ingesting whatever I wanted even if I knew it was going to kill me.  Who does that?  Well, sadly, millions.  But you’re not the boss of me.  I am the boss of me.   And I am going to start treating myself better.  No one else is gonna do it for me.  No one can.  Its all up to me.

Just whiling away the time, sitting at a Chapters/Starbucks on a snowy, September, Monday morning. The roads looked treacherous, the traffic report on the radio sounded ominous and I thought to myself, this would be the perfect day to take a flex day. Grateful for that option. I was planning on stopping for a chai latte anyway and after I stepped deep into a snow bank, filling my boots with snow and cold and wet, I just settled into the warmth and the music of the coffee shop and lost my gumption to go any further. Any further on the freeway to work and any further towards the daily grind.

Lately, this battle has become a little more than I can handle on my own. Which is exactly where God wants me, I’m sure of it. I’m ashamed to admit I’m not as strong as I like to make out or like to portray. I am battle weary. I’m buckling under the weight of all that armour. The weapons of our warfare. Yes, they’re protective. They’re offensive. They’re defensive. It’s the armour of the victorious, for sure. But in some seasons, a person just wants to put down the armour and pray that someone else would fight the battle for them. The battle will not stop for a day off so when we are battle weary we need someone fighting for us. ‘Come to me all you are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ That’s where I find myself on this challenging morning. Wanting a rest. So I’m taking one. Knowing the Lord will fight for me.

Life has been immeasurably good and abundantly rewarding. No argument there. And I’ve seen many mountain tops so I know they are there, but this valley living wears me down. As I’m sure it does you. Most of the time , I am positive and upbeat and winning the battle but doesn’t mean there aren’t dark times when I can barely see in front of me. I know you know what I’m talking about.

The coffee shop is starting to fill up. People using it as an office. Some meeting with friends. Other people on their way to work. Regulars, I’m sure. People with touques and boots and scarves. More baristas arriving for work. The pastry glass is brimming with delightful treats and savoury snacks. The Chapters staff just opening the partition for access to their part of the store, bulging with magazine, books, and the most interesting giftware. I love chapters as a reading place. But in order for it to be a reading place it first has to be a writing place. Someone had to write the words in all those books. Someone had to tell their story. Do the reasearch. Take the pictures. Live the experiences or recreate them or invent them. Which is what I am doing now.

Simple, but important, things like getting my sewing machine back from service, become very real struggles. Planning an outdoor social event at work when you realize it’s going to snow that day and you still want to make it special. Stress. Studying for a safety awareness audit so you can make your company look good. Tension. A mothers concern for a son who drives to Vancouver and ends up with car trouble on the way there and a perilous drive home. Loss of control. Keeping up with house work seems the last thing on my mind. The persistent five days a week driving to the other end of town to do a job you never thought you’d do again and accepting the fact that you have no time for a life. But then you remember, this IS your life. You know the job is for ‘such a time as this’ so you keep at it. You show up each day and smile and work hard and try to be a blessing to those around you. Showing up for the caregiving aspects of life – draining. Showing up in prayer and begging the Lord to deliver your first born safely home on an icy, dark, snowy night when the car isn’t cooperating with his efforts. Showing up to drive my mom home after our weekly Sunday time together and experiencing the terrors of the snow storm myself. It was then I received the three word text from my husband ‘he is home’ . The flood gates of gratitude spilled all over my face and down the front of my sweater. I couldn’t help it. The release of a tension you didn’t even realize was there. At least not in that measure. God heard me once again and felt it appropriate to grant me my plea. So many other stresses I’m not at liberty to share. Somewhere along the journey you need to fill up again. Thus the mental health flex day.

Gratefulness still abounds. Unrealistic expectations lowered. Knowing where the safe places are. Staying in a mindset of growth and perpetual healing. Remembering the love in my life and the loves of my life. Watching the snow fall softly just outside the window. It’s not a raging, windy, angry snow. It’s just falling. At its own pace. Completely oblivious to the havoc it’s creating. It’s rather humorous when you think of it. Snow just being snow. It’s not the perfect storm. It’s cloaking the trees with warm white fluff and gracing the rooftops with a layer of purest white. Encouraging me once again to look for the beauty. He is there. He is carrying you. He is carrying me. It’s all going to be ok.

–

(this is a post from a year ago).

I sit here under my sister’s spacious gazebo, my outdoor sanctuary, for this mornings installment of my retreat vacation and I have no choice but to listen to the birds. They are a choir, each with their own harmony. I don’t think they have twitter accounts but they’ve been tweeting all morning. Several are feasting on the fresh seeds that were just set out for them. I hear the soothing coos of the neighbors morning dove. City noises fill the air but I’m good with it. It makes me feel that all is as it should be. Landscapers mowing lawns, vent guys cleaning vents, large trees swaying the the breeze (yes, thank you Lord for the refreshing, calming breeze), kids laughing. The GO train zooming by with the click of the tracks and the roar of the engine and once it has passed almost a dead quiet again except for the birds. I may even hear a woodpecker. Did I mention we are under the flight path for the airport? So I hear planes high in the sky. People going places. Going on vacations just like mine. Some going for business. Some going for relationships. Some going on adventures. Some escaping and some coming home again.

It’s not scorchingly hot and humid this morning so it is quite pleasant to relax with a purpose. Purpose being to read. To write. To journal. To watch tutorials I’m always too distracted to watch at home. I have no agenda here. Well none other than my own and I’m not attacking it but rather embracing it and pacing myself. Being spontaneous, which is not natural for me. Every now and then I hear a car leaving its driveway and remind myself that I have no where else to be. I’m already here. No timetable to follow.

I rest here on this beautiful plush beach towel surrounded by my favorite things. Magazines, inspirational reading, journals, an ice cold grapefruit water and some licorice. A pencil case full of pens and highlighters. Tall full, lush trees…a private forest. Ivy climbing up the house and fence. Oodles of cushions to add color and comfort to this outdoor living space. Two swings I’m tempted to spend some time on, giving me a full view of the garden alive with lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and pumpkins. Since my sister is the queen of mini lights, the garden yard lends itself nicely to twilight.

I’m not starving. Quite the opposite. I have fifty pounds worth of clothes in my suitcase, so, ample. I have a comfortable bed to sleep in, courtesy of my niece whose been relegated to the basement for my stay. We walked to Streetsville for a Starbucks this evening. Walking indicating health. Starbucks indicating wealth. And I’m so grateful for this ‘state of the union’ in my life.

I’m grateful for the people in my life. I’m grateful for the love in my life. I’m grateful for the faith in my life. I’m grateful that He will never leave or forsake us. So He’s with me matter what, no matter why, no matter when. I truly do have everything thing I need. And I’m learning to make this everything I want.