I have a love hate relationship with something and I want to share it with you. I don't know if maybe you feel the same way. You can let me know either way if you want to go to the Facebook group or on Instagram and send me a direct message that let me know. How do you feel about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? How do you feel about that? I have mixed feelings about it. Every year I have mixed feelings about it. I suspect I actually like it, but I don't. Whenever my husband says, oh, do you want to watch this? I'm like, no, I don't want to watch this, but yet I do. It's so bizarre.
Here's why: I do love the messaging. I do love the many versions that I've seen of A Christmas Carol. I've read the book. I've seen it with Jim Carrey. I've seen it with Henry Winkler. I've seen it with cartoon characters. I mean, I've seen a Christmas Carol and I've actually read the Dickens story. There's value in all of it. The story is not missed. The story being that how we live impacts people's lives and being generous and helping people impacts them. We can impact them for good or for bad. The way we live our lives matters. In the end, what do we want to be known for? What do we want to have accomplished?
This is good, deep stuff, especially for someone like me who has a therapy background where it's like, well, of course I love talking about the stuff that makes life really important and significant. I don't do small talk. I do deep talk. I really love deep talk. Yet this is dark and it's inspirational. It's like when I read Holocaust books not because I like reading about the Holocaust, but because I like reading about how the human spirit and faith in God and people under the direst of circumstances caring for each other is inspirational. It's both awful and inspirational. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is both dark and inspirational because life often has more than one feeling at the same time, more than one observation at the same time.
It got me thinking about if I'm feeling this way, where, oh, I remember these things of Christmas past that were so good and you might be too. If you're feeling nostalgia towards the things of the past and you are sad because they're not here today and you wish that they were, I want to encourage you that it can be both. It can both be that it's not like it was, and it can be that you can enjoy today as well. It can be that you can make good memories today for tomorrow, so when you or your kids or grandkids look back, they can see these were the good old days for them. That doesn't mean that the future days in their present or your present in the future won't be good for you too. Both can coexist.
I want to talk about that today in the sense that, just like with a Christmas Carol, I can have both a love/hate relationship with it. I can take the good from it, and I cannot like a lot of the stuff that makes me sad or want to cringe when I watch it, right? We can do that with our lives. When we look back and we think about how great things were or even how bad things were, I mean, some people did not have a great Christmas historically. If that's you, you can do this kind of in reverse of what I'm saying as well. You get to places where you look back and things either aren't like that now and you wish they were, or they're better now and you're glad they aren't like that.
What do we do with it when we feel like we're remembering something and it's bringing up something unpleasant, like longing or sadness or regrets or a hope for something that we can no longer have, like people to be with us that can't be here anymore. I want to encourage you to look at those things as something you can do something about in the present. Because when we get wistful, when we look back, we're forgetting that those things help contribute to who we are today. When you can see who we are today. Just like Scrooge, right? He was able to look back with the Ghost of Christmas Past and go, that's how I live my life. That's what led to this stuff. I can change it going forward. Well, it's the same thing with good stuff, but we can't get stuck in the past wishing for those good things and missing out on today's good stuff.
I want you to realize, just like with me and having both a love/hate relationship with A Christmas Carol, you can have both feelings. You can have feelings of nostalgia and longing and grief and loss and sadness. And at the same time, hope and excitement and new experiences and new traditions can await you as well. It's not the end of the story whether the past was good or the past was bad.
If it was good, you can carry it with you. Bring Grandma's favorite recipes to the table. Play a game like you used to play when you were a kid. Bring out the old movies for a little bit.
If it was bad, do something to gain what you didn't have back then. Maybe you didn't get toys, so take yourself out and get yourself something nice. Maybe you didn't have a church family, so go to a church service today. Maybe you didn't have supportive network, so find a support group somewhere.
Don't let the past or your emotions, whether positive or negative, whether abundance or lack, take away from the fact that you are a human being who can experience all of the awarenesses, positive and negative, good and bad, abundance and lack, and they can coexist. Today you get to acknowledge the fact that, yep, that's your experience. Simply part of the human experience, right?
The Bible says to forget the former things, God is doing a new thing. It also talks about remembrance, and I think that's indicative of a place for both leaving behind what is past and pressing forward to the goals in Christ Jesus, but also being informed. We have scripture to look back so that we know the story of where we came from and where we are today. Both are important, but it's the story that you and God are writing today that is where you have your power.
Don't be like the one relative that I have who lost her mom and then all of a sudden didn't go out for special occasions on holidays like, oh, no, I'm not going out. Her mother's the one who died. She acted like she did. She still had time to enjoy, and yet she wouldn't celebrate with anybody because she just wanted to stay home. I get that sometimes you feel like staying home, but this was almost like she set up a shrine and said, my mother died, so I can't go out for the holidays. I want to encourage you that that is not how you have to live. You can both honor somebody or honor a memory and bring the life they lived or the good things from the memory with you into the future or learn from it and do something with it in the present, in the future that makes it good or helps you remember or makes you feel better and honors somebody's memory without losing your present power, your present self. Because the future, when you look back, these are going to be the good old days or the days that you're like, oh, that was really rough.
What you do today becomes tomorrow's past. Just be real about it. It can coexist and that can give you peace. Because you don't have to try to pretend everything's perfect. You don't have to get everything perfect for the holidays. Holidays are not perfect. They're human things. Humans are involved in them; therefore, they're not going to be perfect. The fact that they are perfect is the fact that they're imperfect. We know that the holidays are going to have some highs and some bumps in the road, and that's okay. When we can accept that both exist and we don't have to get stuck, we don't have to make it like, oh, everything's ruined because the turkey got burnt. So what? That becomes a good memory.
Going forward, don't take yourself or life too seriously. Enjoy today and be wise about the story you tell yourself. It's not often either or. Highs and lows can coexist. Good memories and sad memories and present hopes and futures of hope can exist, as can stressors. It's okay to know that this is just part of the human experience. It doesn't have to throw me, but I can grieve when I need to, I can celebrate when I want to, I can remember as I wish, and I can move on and do new things. It's all healthy, flexible empowerment. I hope that helps lighten your load today for the holidays!
You know the concept of "both, and?" It's something I talk with clients a lot about, but it's also something I live. Things can be hard and good at the same time. Things can be bitter and sweet at the same time. Things can be, well, things can be rough sometimes, and yet they can still be something that God is using in our lives for good. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good. To those who love God and are called according to his purpose, and that is a promise. That is a truth, and sometimes that's hard to see.
Sometimes life is just clipping along wonderfully, and things are great. And sometimes there are just things, just things: job stressors, medical issues, bills, seasonal affective disorder, winter. Some people love winter. Some people love spring. It's "both, and." It can both be great and be Christmas time and be joyful, and it can be hard, emotional, stressful, sad, glorious, wonderful, fabulous, exciting. It can be "both, and."
I want to give you permission to just give yourself permission. You don't need my permission, but if you need a permission slip to give yourself permission, to be okay with "both, and" which doesn't mean you love the feelings that aren't pleasant or that the stressors are fabulous, but the "both, and" can sometimes make things a bit more manageable. It's like an acceptance that, okay, right now, there's more than one thing that I'm feeling, and there's more than one thing that is contributing to this. We have physical bodies. We have relationships. We have things we have to work towards, or performances, maybe, that you're giving for the holidays or hosting. There's a lot that goes into this time of year, but honestly, there's a lot that goes into being a human, and it's a "both, and" experience as a human. We all want the good stuff, and sometimes the way we appreciate the good stuff is because we've been through the bad, so we know how good the good is, and we want to hold on to that.
I want to just give you that reframe; that good is coming. Good is God. Good is what we can trust in. If it's not good, it's not over yet. We can see good in the land of the living, and also on the other side, when we get to heaven, we can see good there. So, either way, it turns out good for us. So, if it's not good, good still coming. The story is not over yet.
Now, today, my husband and I made a decision, because as much as we have a lot of blessings that we're thrilled about and a lot of things that are going well for us, it's also been a little bit stressful. We've each had a bunch of different things that are, like, nothing life shattering, but just enough things in different areas that are making the "both, and" something very apparent right now, and we're trying to embrace the really good. But we also know that, yeah, there have been some really stressful stressors.
The Pollyanna Game
So, I want to play a game with you and encourage you to maybe play a game with us. The game we are playing is basically the Pollyanna game. The Pollyanna game, if, you know, the old Disney movie, is where Haley Mills' character is so positive, like, she even breaks her legs and she's like, still, everything turns out positive for her.
So, I said to my husband this morning, "What if we just don't say anything negative today? What if we don't do any negative sounds? We don't say anything negative. We just focus on the positive, turn things towards good, and just put that energy out there, right. And just say good things and speak joy, speak light, speak energy."
This past weekend I was speaking a lot of, "Oh, I'm exhausted," and I decided today to say, " Well, it's okay because I'm getting my energy back." That type of thing. That's not exactly what happened this morning, but that's the kind of reframe that I'm giving you as an example. I'm still working on getting my energy back. So, it may not be something that I am fully feeling, but it is something that I feel a whole lot more when I speak it in truth and faith and in a good, positive way rather than, "oh, my gosh, I think I'm dying. I don't have any energy to get out of bed." It's a lot better to go, "You know what? I've gotten some really good rest because I've allowed myself to take that time and just have some good snuggle downtime. And I'm taking care of myself and I'm going to get back to 100% even better, 2024. I'm going to be really healthy because I'm doing the right things now and I know everything's going to be energized and be better." That gives me a lot more oomph than focusing on I don't feel so good there.
When I stood up, I was wearing these shoes for Christmas service last night and they kind of hurt my legs. It's a lot better to say, "Wow. Christmas service last night was amazing. We had a great time. It was our middle child, our 22-year-old daughter, my husband, and myself, and we went to Christmas Eve service, even though it wasn't Christmas Eve. It was wonderful and it was beautiful. We did candlelight singing of 'Silent Night,' and it was just joyful. Then we went out to eat, and we had great time together!"
Now, I could have been, "Oh, my other kids aren't here. My son's doing some stuff with his fiancé's family. My daughter is with some friends. My other daughter is with some friends on a trip right now." It was us and one of our kids, and it was wonderful. It made possible for our middle kid to have some only child time, even though she's an adult. We had a really great time. In fact, we recorded a jokes episode for Christmas, corny jokes that's coming up on Thursday that you may want to tune in for.
If you have kids, young kids especially, you may want to have them listen in because there's just a bunch of cute corny jokes that we just share. We did this last year, and this year, I wanted to do it again. So, Thursday, you can get some happy, corny jokes if you would like to. We did that after the church service, and then we had a nice dinner and such. I could have been, "oh, but the other kids aren't here. Oh, but I miss them." which are true. They weren't there, and I do miss them when they're not here, but that doesn't mean I wasn't enjoying fully the time we had with our other daughter and fully the experience and fully the blessings and what that made possible. It made possible for us to just focus on her and for us to really hear her and for us to all have a really nice memory building time together.
Whether it's everyday life or special holiday seasons, where there is a lot going on, whether you're going through a stressful time in life, you can choose what energy you bring to it. Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we're like, oh, this is just really hard, and that may be very, very true, but if you play the Pollyanna game, it could be, "This is really hard, but what does this make possible? But what will we get here that we didn't otherwise?"
So maybe you're making Christmas dinner, and you burn the green bean casserole. Hey, what a great memory. Remember the year that mom burned the green bean casserole, and the fire department came? Right? Or, oh, wow, I did a horrible job on wrapping these gifts. But you know what? It's the thought that counts, and I never said I was an artist, and I hope you like it anyhow. And maybe it gives you some laughs, because I really don't do so hot at how I wrap things, and they're kind of comical looking, right? So maybe it's just okay.
Maybe everything has a silver lining, or many things have a silver lining. And I think that it's up to us to look for the silver lining, to speak the silver lining, to be energized by the hope and the silver lining of knowing that if it's not good, it's not over, that we can find humor and we can find good things, and we can appreciate simply by refining our focus on what's good, pure, lovely, and true.
So, while I may be tired today, I'm excited, because today I happen to have the day off to relax or to work or to clear my head and pray it's okay to put energy out there, take care of yourself, and realize that in the "both, and," we still have a choice of where we focus, what we speak and how we let the positive energy be a light instead of letting the darkness be the focus. It doesn't mean that there aren't some shades of darkness; it means that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
So, if you want to play the Pollyanna game with my husband and me today, or through the Christmas season or for as long as you like, that's what we're doing right now. If I end up burning something or don't get enough of something for the holidays, for the company that's coming or whatever, it's no big deal. No one's going to remember next year at this time anyhow, unless it's a great memory. Like I burned the green bean casserole!
