A different kind of Advent

Last Wednesday was a very full day for me, it was intentional and planned  When you have to drive to most places you need to be, whilst also allowing for all the extra layers you need to put on at this time of year, a half an hour to an hour activity can take up over two hours of time.  So rather than going out every day of the week for a short while, I opted for a day which was full to the brim, I could then have two full days at home.  I do love my days at home.

I would never have considered planning to intentionally have a very full day, not so long ago.  That would have been a recipe for me thinking about it a lot on the days leading up to it, I would have been awake for most of the previous night worrying about how I was going to fit everything in.   A wakeful night would mean that I was really tired during my busy day, I would forget things or become anxious that I would be late to where I needed to be.   I would be a bag full of worries and anxieties for days.

I know that the last, nearly two, years have been hard for all of us.  I know that the future is and always will be an uncertain place but the added uncertainties of late have been very unsettling.  The enforced slowing down of my life has had unexpected consequences which I have been really grateful for, one of those is that when I focus only on the day ahead and what I need or want to do and how to make it all work, I am totally present.  That doesn't mean that I am not thinking about the bigger picture at all but rather that I am not focusing on the detail of the days ahead which are often the bits that bring in the worries with them and doesn't leave us with much headspace to think about much else.

When the first of December rolled around I had not thought about Advent at all.  In the past I have prepared four weeks of stories, poems and activities based around a different theme each week, usually starting my preparation way back in November.   It would have to be different this year with Cameron at college but I still wanted to do things with Alice.  I have amassed a lovely collection of Christmas storybooks for older children and although we would not have the time to read all these ,as we have in the past, there were some that simply had to be read.  I made some loose plans, a list of possibilities for each week, it gave us all a simpler heartfelt Advent this year.  Rethinking things in this way meant that when I had to make an early tea before Alice went out to Scouts I used the evening to make all the Christmas cards that I was sending this year in one evening and felt a real sense of accomplishment.  I have been making my own cards for years and years and I don't ever remember getting them made in such a short time.  I know that making them is only one part of the process, they did all get written and posted in time even the handful of international ones.  Leaving it late to plan things turned out ok, I had to reduce what we could do but that is no bad thing at this time of year which can get really busy.  Choosing the things that really mattered is something we should probably be doing all the time anyway.

When I write something down to be done on a particular day it psychologically adds a pressure for me to complete it on that day and when circumstances do not allow for that I feel that I have failed in some way.  That last sentence should really have been written in the past tense, another consequence of the last couple of years is that I am learning to let go of this.  I am slowly learning that it is ok when things that I have planned will not be able to happen, it is not a failure.  Even those loose plans I had made did not quite come to fruition as life got in the way.  We read very few of the stories that I had intentions to share this year, prioritising the ones that we love and Advent really would not feel right without sharing them,  The Glass Angels by Susan Hill being one of them.

It is also about trusting that all will be well when it feels like your plans are a little too fluid than you might have usually chosen them to be.  I knew that I wanted to make a few small gifts to give this year, when my Mother in Law was visiting us for a long weekend at the beginning of the month it was forecast to rain for most of her stay, a chance remark by her that she would love to do more crafting led to us doing just that on each day of her stay.  We did needle felting, quilling and wood burning together and I used the time to make several small gifts.

Advent and Christmas is now over for another year.  It has felt relaxed and calm this year, I will try to remember this for future years, that it is possible to have a loose plan and it is ok to let go when things don't pan out quite how we envisaged they would, it does work!  

I hope whatever you celebrate at this time of year has been restful and restoring for you and yours too.