Christmas crunch

I opened a kitchen cabinet and found 3 Barbies and a sticky, greasy lid to some missing crock pot.  I was at my mother's apartment last Saturday, helping her pack up as movers were wrapping furniture in cellophane to keep drawers from opening on the truck.  And I found random item after random item in unexpected places.  It makes perfect sense actually, because, as you may have guessed, my mom is the definition of "random".  (I appear just under her, as the second definition. :)

At any rate, packing boxes and moving my mom is not what I thought I'd be doing the last weekend before Christmas.  It's not necessarily what I wanted to be doing, either.  But there I was, just the same.

My mother and stepfather are struggling.  I know I've blogged about them before.  My stepfather has Parkinson's and dementia and my mother is his primary caregiver.  Sounds pretty straightforward, typed up in one neat little sentence like that.  But anybody who's had relatives with health issues or had to deal with aging parents knows how heavy this all feels. My mother has recently had health issues of her own (joint and muscle pain) and she is seeming increasingly confused and forgetful, herself.

Dealing with the move, caring for her and Mario, prepping for Christmas, squeezing in last-minute visits with friends and family before leaving town----well, it's all been too much.  I know many, MANY of you are also now feeling your own version of the "Christmas crunch".

To me, it began to feel as if I had a "1 TON" trapezoid weight resting on my chest.  (You know the ones that appear in the cartoons, at the circus?  Picture that on top of an already small me!) It's affected my breathing and my peace.

So I've been trying to take my own advice.  I told my worship team the other night (as a kind of pre-Christmas eve service pep talk) that the most important thing is for us to stay connected to God and to each other.  No one's Christmas season is as perfect as the idyllic scenes on the Christmas cards----not even the very First Christmas!

But what we are celebrating is the very fact that God is our Savior, our Life Preserver on the stormy seas of life.  Clinging to Him is the best chance we've got at making it!

So, cling to Him, I will.  This morning, I'm feeling a little more hopeful, as if the weight has shifted off of me.  Of course, I'm still in my p.j.'s as I type this, and am fresh from my devotional time with God.  The day is young and there's still plenty of time for me to put that weight back on top of me.  :P  But if it lands on me again, I'm going to make every effort to peer around it and over it to the bigger and more beautiful things around me.

"For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ our Lord."