How To Be A Light In The World This Holiday Season

Thanks for posting this cookie recipe. I’ve been experimenting with this cookie recipeEaster resurrection cookies. Have you ever tried Easter resurrection cookies? Or has your mother ever made them? Have a great Christmas – KA

Ha, the stupid thing is, it turns out he did have boots that fit. After all that driving around in a pretty bad snow storm, rushing to get those stupid boots between picking him up from school, and getting my daughters, we found his boots later on that evening. Just another day in paradise :)

Well, I am completely over my smugness about the holiday stuff that was done.

Yesterday my husband had to leave work early because my son developed hives in school. We’d sent him to bed early the night before & forgot his Zyrtec. Then in Spanish-at-lunch, they fed him some Spanish bread with oranges in it (weird — who else do you know who’s allergic to oranges, for Pete’s sake?) He knows his allergies, but doesn’t know citron is orange. AND… to top things off, we didn’t have his allergy paperwork up to date at school.

So today I stayed home to take kiddo to the doctor, get all his school paperwork up to date & new epi-pen at school (he won’t need it, but just in case.) The weather is way sloppy today, and guess what? Kiddo doesn’t have winter boots that fit (another errand for home day.)

So I had the tree & outside lights up, over half of Christmas shopping done, over half of Christmas cards ready to mail (it’s been at least 5 years since we managed Christmas cards), and important things like winter boots and allergy papers NOT done.

I had to check in on this post when I saw the picture again. It reminded me of my busy but great weekend. With help from my kids, we actually got the tree done (they did it [almost] all!) and outside lights up the very first weekend of December. AND we did a decent job celebrating my husband’s birthday, and got a good start on Christmas shopping. Never in my life have I got so much holiday “stuff” accomplished so early. (I’m usually that person scrambling to get the majority of my Christmas shopping done a few days before Christmas.)

And, just to make things really wonderful, the very night I hung the outside lights (& I almost put some of it off, since it was getting dark by the time I got to it) it snowed! The new lights are so gorgeous agains the snow :)

You were a light at our party. My daughter LOVED you. I think you’re who she wants to be when she grows up;)

p.s. to Remy – Jak was my former life coach ;) so he’s cool with being coached for sure (has had, and does have, coaches of his own…). He must just not like the “life coach” title right now, not sure why! Let him speak for himself if he likes! :-) Love ya Jak!

Julita said, “Today, my 10 year old told me on the way to school that it’s December already and that I am an ‘awesome’ mom, something I would never hear from my 13 year old.”

At 10, she’s old enough to have a worthwhile opinion on that, too.

I can’t imagine there are many 13 year olds who would say that to their mothers. I often feel like my teenagers are comparing me to their friends’ mothers, and I’m coming up short. That’s hard sometimes, but I try not to feel bad about it for more than a moment. Most of their friends do seem to have great parents — I like all of them I’ve met (and the great kids are the proof.) They are the only kids in their group with divorced parents, and most of their friends have stay-at-home moms. When I think about that, I feel pretty good that I’ve managed to raise kids who fit in with the well-parented gang. I like to hope it means I did something right :)

Anyway, I know how you feel about hitting that point in your life where you feel you could have done things differently, and be in a more fun place. I was there, where I didn’t laugh and hardly smiled for I don’t even know how long, until I took up swing dance. Even now, I feel it when I’m unhappy where I’m at with my dancing. With 3 kids, a husband, and a full time job to care for, I don’t have time to practice the way I’d like, and with the arthritis in my knees getting worse, I know my time for improvement is limited. (Even if I had more time to practice, I don’t know if the knees could take it, honestly.)

But I’ve come to realize now that this feeling had less to do with my circumstances, and more to do with my body chemistry. I’ve recognized for years that there’s a certain time of year I become low energy and have trouble coping. I read up on it, and have been doing light therapy on my own, and it helped, but wasn’t really cutting it. Finally, after years of dealing on my own as best I could, I talked to my doctor about it. I’ve been taking a low dose of sertraline for about a month now, and I feel, in terms of mood and energy level, the way I normally do in May (or whatever part of May I don’t have PMS, which I also didn’t suffer from this month.)

And that means that I can again see that I don’t have to be a dance expert to enjoy it. (Good thing, because at the rate I’m going, it will take me, literally, until I’m 75 to get the 10,000 hours of practice they say it takes to become expert at a skill.) The fact that I got out there and took up the dancing has been such a great thing in my life. And with your kids old enough to handle much of their own care, you should have time to take up a hobby of some sort. My husband does photography and draws, and that helps him, just as the dancing helps me. Some people knit. I have a friend who organized a neighborhood bunko night, and made new friends that way. There’s a lot you can do to enrich your own life. You just need to come up with the energy to do it, and there is help available for that.

(BTW, my husband went through a milder version of the same this fall, and he’s finding that ginseng is a big help. My one daughter, who tends to be very resistent to simple requests for help around the house, and looks terribly unhappy about them, has started taking ginseng, and it seems to be helping her, too.)

Ah well I can call you anything you like, great Sorcerer Jak! ;) Interesting for sure that that bothers you with all the different kinds of greatness that you pass on in the world. YOU are a giant shining light. :)

Thanks for passing the light onward… now help me figure out why I’m so tweaked by the term “life coach” and that will help me get somewhere :P

Lisa, your writing is amazing. You have managed to unite, in my mind and heart, memories which are favorites for different reasons.

I have always found the short days of winter difficult. When I lived in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the days shortened faster, and became shorter, than what I’d been used to in Chicago. There, hardly anyone put lights out right after Thanksgiving — it seemed they were all on something closer to my schedule — but by the third week of November, nearly every house had some sort of Christmas lights up (even ours.) I’m convinced the only exceptions were people who had religious reasons for not using them. (I had a friend who would not put them up herself for religious reasons, but truly enjoyed everyone else’s.) No one took them down until well into January. Many of us waited until spring, and continued to light them into February. I loved the way those holiday lights lit up the darkness of those long Wisconsin winter nights, and lifted our spirits.

During the time I went to college between my marriages, I had a boyfriend who was, shall we say, less than ideal. Part of the reason I accepted that at the time was because I felt my option were very limited. I had 2 children, so I would need someone who liked children enough to be willing to parent mine. I couldn’t have any more children, and I couldn’t, at the time, imagine that anyone who was interested enough in children to accept mine, would be okay with not having children of his own.

Meanwhile, in my very first programming class, the professor told us the best way to communicate with him was through email. So I set up an account, using his instructions, and he was the very first person I ever sent email to. As we corresponded about the class, this professor allowed a good bit of his personality and experience to come across in his communication, and I suppose I must have done some of that, too. Over time, he came to offer guidance in more than just academics. The most inspiring thing I learned about him was that he married a woman with children, and they never had any together, and was happy with the ready-made family. He talked about her like she was the most wonderful person who ever walked the earth (and I understand she was something special.) Getting to know someone who had done that really gave me hope.

Soon after I graduated, I wrote to him how I had nearly everything I’d ever dreamed of. I joked that all I needed to make my life ideal, was a rich husband. He wrote back a more serious answer about what I really needed in a husband, and I responded with a list of all that I really wanted in a man. Little did I know that I’d already met someone who had all the qualities I’d listed (including a willingness to take me to the opera.) I started dating my current husband just a couple weeks after that.

Soon after we were married, I brought to work a pencil drawing of a candel that my husband did for me. I loved that picture, because it showed the candle lighting up the darkness, just as my husband did, and continues to do, for me.

Thanks to you Lisa, whenever I see those holiday lights, which carry us through the winter darkness until the longer days of spring begin, I believe I will think of Professor Larson, and how his inspiration helped carry me through the time until I met my husband.

I have a great friend, Steve, who always seems to know the right questions to ask me, in order to light up a path to take. I value him tremendously and just sent him a note to tell him so. My son also had a nice comment to me last night, when we were comparing his friend’s parents on their level of ‘coolness’. He said “Mom, you are totally the least embarrassing out of all of my friend’s moms.” Based on where I’ve been lately in my heart and mind, I’ll take that compliment! lol Thank you Lisa for an inspiring post.
See you Friday! Rem

Lisa,

Today, my 10 year old told me on the way to school that it’s December already and that I am an ‘awesome’ mom, something I would never hear from my 13 year old.

as you know, I am a bit depressed lately (realizing my life is half over) and there are days when I regret that I had given up my career for 10 long years to stay home to be with my girls. being middle aged I feel like I have missed out on life and that there is not much to look forward to. I see my life as boring and hopeless at times.

so to answer your question: ‘Who has lit the way for you?’ I would say my little girl who is so sweet, so smart, so loving and who thinks I am an ‘awesome mom’. she is the one who puts a smile on my face, :)

I can’t wait for spring, when I will have more energy!

best wishes to you for the holiday season<3

On the eve of Thanksgiving the apple cider was on the stove, the girls were in the front yard putting up the lights and hanging the large tree decorations. Two other women were decorating the tree, a couple others were preparing food the the next day, it was wonderful.
We were all in the mood for the holidays, a great way to set off the season as a group AND to be done with the decorating.
Each year I feel differently about the holidays. That’s just ok, however I feel is how we approach these days.

Your post was inspiring. We are all one.

I so look forward to meeting you. Smile and enjoy.

Veronica