Are you all done?

We all have our own areas of vulnerability.  One of mine happens to be shopping.  As I wandered aimlessly through a packed mall  looking for something special for my daughter-being-baptized last week, I must have been asked at least three times if I was all done.  All done my Christmas shopping was what the nice smiling ladies were asking.  I gave my nice smiling face back, gulping and trying to be funny and meaningful all at once.  "Well actually, I haven't yet begun" or "I just keep it all really simple."  Inside my stomach was knotting and I was thinking,  "I have no idea where to begin."  "This is not my thing!"  "I can't even find a baptism present let alone get started on Christmas!"  It does matter to me as much as I give all the right spiritual platitudes about it not mattering.  For goodness sake, I have eight kids and myriad family to buy for. I want them to feel special and cared for!  Even Jesus got gifts at his birth!

Now don't get me wrong.  I like surprises.  I like perfect meaningful gifts.  I have friends who are good at presents and enjoy it.  I do like giving gifts.  I like sharing.  I just am no good at shopping or even at making lovely little packages of cookies or granola.  Quite honestly, it does significantly complicate Christmas for me.  I know that it is not the gifts that are important.  I talk to myself about "presence" instead of "presents." I could probably even write a nice blog about  "Presence."  I had it half written in my head as I wandered around the stuffed mall last week.  I am good at the presence part of Christmas.  I want to focus on that.  I love the lighting the candles.  Reading the special Christmas books outloud.  Cooking the nourishing warm meals.  Smelling the cranberry-apple cinnamon hot cider brewing on the stove.  It is just that no matter how hard I try to tell myself that Christmas is not about presents, it is those darn presents or lack of them that catches in my throat and brings panic into the whole season.

Yes, we will try to keep it simple.   We will try to focus on the "Reason for the Season."  This year maybe I will be a little more gentle with myself and accept that the panic is okay.  I'll welcome it and include it along with the joy of all that is good and peaceful and loving.  I won't have it all perfect.  Some of the kids will be secretly  disappointed.  I'll be okay with that too.  I'll cook a lovely meal and fill the stockings with toothpaste and soap and an orange.  I'll tell myself to start earlier next year, knowing that will not be as I don't know what to get any earlier than later.  I'll go forward with the mixed feelings, the angst and the incompleteness that is life and indeed a huge part of the whole entire season of being a human being.