“That’s Good Enough!”
Last year, about this time, I was driving to work enjoying Christmas music and was reminded that Dolly Parton will be “home for Christmas” and “Mary’s baby boy will someday walk on water.” The cooler weather and the holiday music took me back to my childhood Christmas’s in Tennessee.
My expectations for Christmas have always been pretty high and having the perfect holiday was once very important to me. But the older and wiser I become, the more I realize that the stress, worry, panic, and feeling of exhaustion is just not worth it. My new philosophy for holiday prep is pretty simple: ‘that’s good enough.”
What does that mean?
- It means when you are standing in the grocery store and find yourself spending way too much time on deciding what rolls to buy because you know Aunt Mary loves crescents and cousin Bob loves potato bread, you take a deep breathe, grab the Hawaiian Sweet Rolls on sale, and say to yourself, “that’s good enough!”
- It means when you clean the house for your company but start to drag out the vacuum again on Christmas morning, you stop and say to yourself, “that’s good enough!”
- It means that when you are finished with your Christmas shopping but see something on TV you think that your sister will just love it and head out to purchase it, you pause and say to yourself “that’s good enough!”
- It means, when you realize you had neglected to buy holiday napkins and start to head to the store, you pause and remember, your family is “gathering for a purpose” and by thinking less on the practicalities such as decorations or food or the “what’s” and more about the “why’s” you are gathering will bring more meaning to your gathering.
It means that YOU cannot create a perfect Christmas. Because the meaning of Christmas is already perfect.
For information on our Memory Ministry or Memory Café, please contact Vicky at vpitner@firstumc.org.