Another Christmas Eve is here. As I sit and reflect on how this year’s holiday season has gone I realize progress was made this year. For the first time in years Christmas wasn’t something just to be survived and gotten through!
I’ve spent numerous of the years past turning myself inside out trying to survive the holidays. That or exhausting myself alternating between trying to avoid them wishing away pain and memories or trying to make them perfect. Somehow this year in just letting go it was actually a very enjoyable season.
Did I get Christmas cards out this year? Nope. Get everything on the list of things I wanted to get for people I love? Not even close. Did I find a new favorite Christmas album that I wore out every commute back and forth to work for a month? Yep. (Thank you Cher.) Bake cookies and treats until I was exhausted but happy? Yep.
Tomorrow we are shucking the traditional Christmas menu and replacing it with tamales (brought in through contacts at work) and easy sides. No 5 am turkey shenanigans for me. Short of jumping on a ship I don’t remember another year we’ve dropped traditional Christmas dinner. What’s more? Everyone is pretty darn excited about it!
2024 was a year of huge changes. If you had asked me at this time last year if I’d be living anywhere other than Irving where I’d spent the last 20 years I’d have told you that you were smoking something. But if this year has taught me anything it’s that unlike what life has shown me the last decade or so change can also be good. So I guess it shouldn’t really surprise me that Christmas this year would be different! 🎄
Can you remember a single “ah ha” moment when you realized that life was happening to you instead of you being in control of your future? I haven’t had a lot of those but there are times God takes out a billboard in my face to make sure I don’t miss it.
All around me people I love are struggling. Some with the pain of recent loss of loved ones. Family with new challenges that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Others still facing the same old cycle of anxiety and depression kicking their butt. It is my habit to take on these emotions and let them guide me to a place that isn’t healthy for me while I attempt to make sure people I love and hold dear are “ok”.
I was programmed from a very very early age that my role was to take care of others. As I look back on the last couple of weeks through the filter of seeing myself in others’ eyes I have realized that I’ve mistaken fear for selflessness. It’s been EASIER to live a life taking care of others than it has been to push myself out of my comfort zone. It’s been EASIER to base my decisions on where I presume I am most needed instead of what is best for me.
My counselor says F.E.A.R. means “False Evidence Appearing Real”. How easy it is to convince myself I “have” to do something because I’m needed, the only person who can do it, blah blah blah. The evidence is that those around me would get by without my help. Perhaps even stand stronger if I’d stop trying to do it for them. How easy it is to let fear allow me to put what I need or know will make me happy on the back burner so someone I care about can be.
Tim and I are have some major life decisions in front of us. I’m paralyzed with fear over them. Dumbfounded by how much the childhood mantra I live with is playing in my head – you don’t deserve that, you aren’t good enough for that, you can’t do that. It’s cast a giant light over my life as a whole (maybe this is a mid-life crisis?) and I don’t like what I see. Fear has guided too many of my decisions and kept me in the survivor role instead of the drivers seat. I so badly want to change that….
Anyway, I’m rambling. The message here is focus on life and not the fear. The fear will always be there – how much control I give the fear and the fretting is only determined by me. It is such a hard habit to break…but I am determined. Mostly. If my body would cooperate that would be fabulous – panic attacks that leave me on the bathroom floor aren’t so fun.
What decisions in your life have you looked back and realized were only fear based?
I’m gonna age myself here but I can remember driving down the road with my grandpa and it being more uncommon to hear someone lay on their horn than it is now. As I learned to drive, and doing so in a small town no less, basic acknowledgment when someone let you in or moved to the shoulder to let you pass was commonplace. Where a hand written note as a thank you when given a gift was a given not an option.
We all know that everything comes back into fashion in one way or another. How many kiddos are wearing fanny packs slung across their body (like it’s a new idea) or bell bottoms? 😆
I guess the thought puzzling me today is – will kindness and good old fashioned compassion ever become fashionable again?
I miss the days where men took off their hats when they walked indoors and especially when they sat down at a table to eat. Where men held open doors for women without a second thought. (One of the things I adore about Tim is he opens the car door every single time we go anyplace – no matter the weather.) Where please, thank you, and yes sir no sir rolled off of our children’s tongues because they knew if their mama found out they didn’t there would be hell to pay. Where shaking your opponents hand at the conclusion of a game was more important than a participation trophy. Where a child in the classroom wouldn’t ever even think about sassing their teacher lest she call his parents.
Will any of this ever come back in style? Kindness and compassion? Feeling sorry for the mama with the screaming baby instead of judging her because her overtired two year old can’t contain himself any longer while she is just trying to get stuff for dinner on the way home after a 12 hour work day? Where people stop when they see an accident happen instead of going on by because they don’t want to get involved? Or whip their phone out to record a situation instead of helping?
As a mama I truly hope so. Seeing the changes in the world just in the last twenty years makes me afraid for what it will be like by the time my kids are my age.
Most of my world right now revolves around “green stuff” as Tim calls it. (For those of you who follow me on Insta or FB sorry about the garden overload!) But when I was watching a show I follow on Discovery + called ‘Growing Floret’ the other night it finally clicked as to why, after 23 years in the landscape business, this is the year I’m so passionate about it.
After Fred passed the flight reflex I’ve always had got worse. Way worse. I wanted to be anywhere but home. My mind was filled of thoughts of getting out of Texas, anywhere but here, I didn’t care. Never really realizing that I was running from what was inside. And that no matter how many miles I put between home and those that loved me I wouldn’t be able to ever escape until I stopped and healed.
Birds Eye View of my Haven
Cue up today. I’ve always had a green thumb. I will proudly say I got that from my grandfather. But in years past my gardening was to pay homage to him. To be close to Fred. It wasn’t about me. It was about pleasing them, honoring them, missing them. What I have finally realized is different about this year is that the fear is gone. Fear of “doing it wrong”. Fear of disappointing them. Fear of anyone’s judgement if it doesn’t yield, look right, blah blah blah. Something about the changes in me in the last two years have allowed me to do this for ME this year. And to be ok with it being for me. I still look at all my magazines. Watch the green shows until Tim, I’m sure, wants to throw the remote and I soak up TikToks and YouTubes like a sponge. But if it dies? Doesn’t yield like I want? Pull it up and start again. (There is a life metaphor in there somewhere I’m sure.)
This spring in my business hasn’t been any different. In fact it’s been 100x worse. My anxiety, when I focus on it, is off the charts. Panic attacks are a new thing I’m not really fond of. I’m going through huge changes at work. The pressure is intense. But a not so little difference this year? I pull up to the stop sign at the corner each day and my body lets out a breath. I sit at that stop sign for a fraction longer than I have to and I take in my yard. It’s not pride I feel. It’s peace. I’m home. More importantly? I WANT to be home.
As I walk towards my “shades of Caribbean” painted gate along the brick path that I saw in my magazines and Tim made a reality the fear, stress, and worry of the day seeps out of me. The gladiolus are starting to reward me with gorgeous blooms that make me smile. Once I get inside the gate I have to force myself to go inside and say hello to Tim and the dogs before I race back outside to see what changed in the last 24 hours in the garden. (And yah somedays I forget to say hello to them!).
I grab my “f*&% it bucket” as I call it – which houses a skirt with all my tools on it and a wide open space for all the weeds I’ll pull and cuttings I’ll take off if need be – and I head outside. I usually have about 45 minutes after I get home while Tim is still working that I get to be outside in the garden and unwind. Tim worries constantly that I’ve bitten off too much, that it’s too much work, and what I can’t quite make him understand is that it’s a form of medicine that if they ever figured out how to bottle would put the pharmaceutical companies out of business.
Despite having harvested about 10 lbs of squash at this point I squeal like a teenager at each new little “baby” that emerges. I check the cukes and wait impatiently for enough to be ready to start canning. I hover over my tomatoes like a mother bird – so afraid the squirrel is gonna take them again this year. I pore over seed catalogs and sites looking for something new and different I can try my hand at growing.
And I now I realize. Despite my teasing Tim about his travels this summer – I am content to know I’m gonna be home in my garden. I’ve waited a long time to feel some sense of home and hearth again. To be able to open my heart to love and to be loved again. All of those things are the reasons my home and my heart are thriving. Like my beautiful plants God nurtured me through the tough times, watered and fertilized me when I was withering, and now my roots are strong again. I trusted him when I was broken and dying and unable to see the sun and he nurtured me the same way I do any of my plants.
Colossians 2:7 – Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.
I’m thankful. So very thankful. Blessings y’all – Amy
Are you an ask permission person or an ask forgiveness person? What I mean is this…is your life bound by societal rules, childhood subconsciously learned rules, social pressure rules…you get the idea. Or is your life a Katie-bar-the-door they can forgive me later kind of life? There isn’t really a middle spectrum in my opinion.
Me? I’m a permission gal. Always have been. Always want to do the right thing, say the right thing, or BE what everyone expects me to be. Even in my travels I’m asking permission – in a way – by discussing each trip with my circle before really taking the plunge. If even one person in that circle didn’t think whatever I had dreamed up was awesome my mind would immediately start to worry. Undo. Imagine worst case scenario. FEAR.
In a permission life there isn’t a lot of spontaneity. You are too afraid of going against the grain. Standing out. Being judged. What I failed to realize is that those rules (walls) were slowing moving in on me. Inch by inch, day by day, year after year. As the roles that literally defined me have disappeared those walls have closed in hard. Wife. Mother. Caretaker. Niece. Granddaughter. Employee. Friend. Some of these roles will always be in existence but either they have drastically changed or I am no longer content to exist solely as they have always defined me. It has gotten almost impossible to be content being every one else’s version of Amy.
My idea of a forgiveness kind of life is being free. The old adage “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” is ringing in my ears right about now. I imagine a forgiveness life means you are free to not think about every conversation in your head before you have it looking for and eliminating any landmines that might cause confrontation. Free to say (as Fred would have) “F*&$ ’em and feed ’em fish heads” if they don’t like it. Free from the stress of seeing all the bad (and only the bad) the world has to offer. Free from the anxiety of worrying about all the bad the world has to offer. Free to decide I want to go somewhere or do something without checking in with anyone to make sure it’s a good idea. Free to not let that sixth sense you have about people and situations completely immobilize you. Free to not apologize for my existence. Free to have the knowledge that I can am a smart, driven, capable person who can protect myself!
Along with recognizing my dissatisfaction of my roles I have come to realize that living a permission kind of life limits me. Comparing these two – both as I write this and in all the self work I’ve been doing – I can realize that a permission life was safe for me at one point in my life. It was what I needed for survival. It gave me stability and I knew what the rules are. As the universe is saying “stop hiding and start living” the permission life now feels like a concrete block pulling me to the bottom of the ocean faster than I can scream for help.
My real dilemma now is figuring out how to make the transition. My motivation app keeps me deluged in “greatness” and “chase your dreams” pep talks but my 43 year old brain hasn’t connected how to go from waiting on permission to figuring out and leaping towards my new “hell ya” season of life. I suspect the emotional weight I carry that keeps me feeling like I’m drowning is the insecurity of not knowing what rules I am living by now. What to do. Where I am going. Who my brain thinks it should be asking for permission. Who I freaking am for Pete’s sake.
My impatient immediate gratification self is going to have to learn how to just enjoy the journey. I know with work it will come in time. It’ll take repetitive conscious decisions to take actions different than I always have. Speaking openly and honestly on this blog is one of my “fuck ’em” decisions. (Ha! I didn’t do the expected thing and make the bleep ok!) You may not always like what I have to say but you damn sure are always going to know it came from my heart.
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