I really don't know if you have this problem, but we sometimes get mail delivered to our house that doesn't belong to us. In fact, it may not even be mail that belongs on our street. It may not be mail that belongs anywhere near us and somehow it gets mixed up in the mail that's dropped off at our home. Now, I really appreciate that our mail carrier brings mail to us in all kinds of different weather and all of the stuff they go through. I know it is not an easy job, but what is really frustrating is when something is put into our mailbox that becomes something we need to do something about and it's not ours. It's like I didn't make the mistake of putting it in the wrong mailbox and it's not my mail. Now I have to take time out of my schedule, out of my responsibilities, and what I have to do to make up for something that belongs to somebody else. Both the mistake which goes to the mail carrier and the mail getting to somebody else because it's not mine.
So, that's naturally something that is kind of irritating and frustrating. Now I get to choose whether I'm going to be irritated or frustrated about that or how I think about that or what I do about that. Okay, so if I must confess, if it's junk mail, right, I probably am going to pitch it. If it's something that is junk mail, then I'm just doing the world a favor by not trying to forward that on.
If it is something that looks more valuable, it might get confusing. Do I go hunt down this place that I've never heard of, google it, call somebody, report it to the post office and have the mail person come back and get it? I have options, right? So, I have a choice of something that is just like a flyer that's like, okay, so let's say there's a circular that comes and it has someone else's address on it, but it says to a "resident," that's going in the trash. Now, if something came to me and it looks like it's from something important or that it could be a check, a bill, or it's something medical, well, you can bet I'm going to pay a bit more attention to that.
Even though it's still not mine, even though I didn't make the mistake, and even though I'm not the one that the mail is for, I get to choose what level of involvement I have. So, I can think whenever mail comes that isn't mine what level of response do I want to show up with this? Do I want to allow this to be a minor irritation? Do I want to get really upset about this and tell off the post office? Do I want to tell myself these things happen, and I don't like it, but that's just part of life. That's usually the one I err on, okay?
Now, if they were doing this every day, multiple times a day with multiple people's mail, I'm probably going to call the post office and say, something has to be done about this because I'm wasting too much time doing the job that somebody else isn't doing well to try to get mail to people. So, I'm leveling up my actions based on the frequency and the level of the disturbance and the dysfunction that's going on. So, there's something really wrong if the mail for other people is constantly being given to me.
But if it is just a one time here or there thing, then it's just a fact of life. There's no need to get upset about it, and so I tell myself that, I understand you don't like it, Michelle. It's not your responsibility. Would be great if it didn't happen, but big deal. We're going to roll with it and we're going to be fine.
So, in that, what do I have? I have the ability to choose my thoughts, to choose my feelings, and to choose my actions. Choosing my thoughts, feelings and actions belongs to me. The thoughts, feelings, and actions of the person who made the mistake do not belong to me. That's their stuff. The mail does not belong to me. It belongs to whoever the mail is addressed to. How the person who didn't get their mail or eventually does get their mail, thinks, feels, or acts also does not belong to me. Right? I could go find where this street that I have no idea where it exists is and go drop off the mail, and that person could yell at me for stealing their mail, they could thank me for bringing their mail, or they could just kind of ignore me and just take it from me and no big deal. They get to choose how they think, feel, and act.
So, what do I do then about how they think, feel, and act is I can be irritated if they're rude about it. I can be no big deal. Okay, fine. Glad I brought it to you. Sorry it didn't matter to you anyhow. I can be like, oh, how nice of them to accept that and enjoy it. It volleys back to me as to what I do with the input that comes from this person when I drop off their mail. If I did that, things get tangled when we forget that we are not the other person and that the way someone else thinks, feels, and behaves does not belong to us.
Often as Christian women, we get caught up in feelings of wanting to help and wanting to care. Maybe people telling us something belongs to us that doesn't belong to us as far as what to think, feel, or how to act. It can get confusing because we can have this experience of feeling like we're involved in something that really doesn't involve us. It's kind of like the mail...the mail that ends up at my home that isn't addressed to me and that got there through no fault of my own is not my mail. Now my responsibility is what to do with the stuff that got to me in error, and that's where I can choose what I think and do. I can call the post office, I can search out the owner, or I can ignore it and say probably junk and pitch it. All of those things are once it arrives at my doorstep. The tricky part is that so many times we allow other people's stuff to come to our doorstep and feel like we're responsible for actually managing that stuff that doesn't belong to us.
If I receive an Amazon package to my door of things I never ordered. If I didn't order it, I don't want it, it's not mine. So, I get to say, not mine, take it back or I call Amazon and they say to just keep it anyway. I get to decide if it's valuable and I want to keep it, if I want to pitch it, if I want to donate it, or what I want to do with it because I'm the one responsible for it.
All of this to say that as I give you these two stories, do you ever feel like people's mistakes end up being your responsibility? Like people's feelings or actions end up being something you have to do something about, even though it's not yours. It arrived in your life through no fault of your own, and it's really not yours? Do you find that people put their expectations as to how you should think, feel, or behave onto you? Do you recognize that if and when people do that, you can say not mine, or do you get swept up in the other person's thoughts, feelings and actions about what you should do? It can get pretty complicated if you're not good at sorting through what's your mail or your Amazon packages and somebody else's.
It can be complicated when you don't know what your thoughts and feelings are, your choices for actions, your expectations, your behaviors that you want to do, or what others are trying to get you to do because of their thoughts, feelings, or actions and what they expect of you. It's kind of difficult to sort through this if you're one of these people that gets a lot of other people's stuff and is particularly compassionate, a people-pleaser, or in particular, just wants to make sure you do the right thing, get approval, don't make waves, or don't like people being angry or upset about things. This might be something that you struggle with, and if so, it's understandable and yet it's still not necessarily yours. You're not responsible for other people's mail. You're not responsible for other people's mistakes. You're not responsible to behave a certain way simply because somebody expects that of you or wants that for you because they put that on you. It doesn't make it anymore your mail or your package, and you don't have to follow through on it as if it does.
Where do you need to say, that that just is not mine and I am returning it to sender? You don't get to tell me how to feel about myself or about this situation. You don't get to tell me how I'm going to respond or not. You don't get to tell me how I feel, how I think, or how I'm going to choose to act. And if I disappoint you, that is your disappointment to deal with. That doesn't mean I did anything wrong because I'm staying in my lane.
Romans 14:12 talks about each person needing to give an account to God for our lives. And that's giving an account for how we live our lives. It's not giving an account for how other people think we should live our lives. It's not giving an account for how other people want us to live our lives and whether we lived up to other people's stuff. It is how we lived our lives. What we're responsible for is our thoughts, feelings and actions. We are not responsible for taking on all of the weight of everybody else and their expectations for us.
You know, at the holidays, the things that normally stress us pretty much grow to these gigantic proportions. It's kind of like that monster in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, you know, the Bumble. It's like he's so ferocious. That's kind of what our stress can do; can kind of feel so ferocious. Like with the Bumble, we kind of have to pull the teeth out of the stress and make it kind of harmless and let it just kind of bounce.
Letting our stress bounce like the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer's Bumble is really what I want to talk about because if we don't let it bounce, it will tear you. It will make everything less enjoyable. It will make perfectionism go through the roof for these unattainable goals that you have for what the holidays should look like, feel like how things should go, what people should be there, and how they should respond. It'll make things so much harder. Or if you let it go, it can cause you to shut down or feel overwhelmed such that you might get kind of fear paralyzed, kind of stuck, and not able to do as much. That can also weaken your immune system, and you can end up sick for the holidays, and we don't want any of that stuff. It also can just put so much stress on you that your mind won't settle down. You won't be able to get good sleep. You might mindlessly eat, and that causes more stress and body fatigue and just kind of feeling icky in your own skin.
So, we really want to rip those teeth out of the Bumble; take the teeth and the bite out of the stress. The first way you need to do that is to be aware of it. That means being aware of your body. Your body holds the truth about the state you are in. Your mind may think that you're doing just fine. Your emotions may feel totally okay, but your nervous system and your muscles in your body will tell you if you're working too hard, if you're stressing too much, and when you can relax. That tension in your body is when you're truly doing well. So, there may be some unreasonable expectations that you have in your mind. There may be over the top aspirations that you have for this holiday season. You may have demands on your time that you didn't have before, extra commitments, things that you're running to and from, gifts that you're trying to pick up, budget stressors, kids yelling or whining, relationship interactions that are more brisk than usual. It's time to slow down the body. Slow down the body and you will slow down the mind. Slow down the body and you will slow down your breathing. Slow down your body and you will slow down the stress and I can almost hear you right now, but Michelle, there's no time to slow down. That's easy for you to say. You can't know what I'm going through. Yes, yes, it's busy. Yes, it's a challenge. Yes, you can intentionally take time to slow down your physical body and calm it.
Tips for Managing Holiday Stress
- Pretend like you are walking through sand. Softly, gently. The more you force, the more it packs, and you can't get through, but if you just gently walk, it kind of melts away as you go through it. Just really gently slow down your breathing. Take a few moments to inhale for a nice deep breath and slowly release it out as slowly as you can and repeat that for several cycles.
- Take time to stretch. Do some wonderful stretching of your arms and your shoulders and your head. Just do some warmup kind of stretches or some cool down kind of stretches. Touch your toes a few times. Roll your neck, stretch overhead, reach behind you and lift up.
- Take a warm bath. Use some aromatherapy. Get some essential oils or a diffuser, or your favorite perfume, or your favorite fabric softener. Cuddle up with a blanket.
- Get your favorite drink. Oh, my husband said he's loving the Sheetz White Hot Chocolate right now. I have yet to try it, but I am going to. That's on my kindness to myself list for something to do very soon.
- Enjoy the specialness of the season but be mindful of what your body is telling you. If you're carrying stress in your shoulders, if you're carrying tension in your back, if you feel too exhausted at the end of the day or like you cannot get up or like you're driven by a motor and you can't stop, those are all signs that your nervous system is overly taxed and it's okay to relax it. Say no to some activities. Put some things onto a delegation list where you let someone else in your family take care of those things. Order out or order in. Let someone else do some of the things that they can do so that you can do the things that only you can.
At this holiday season, remember that there is only one you. And the reason for the season is not to stress. It's to feel grace, it's to feel love. It's to feel connection. It's to live in the freedom of salvation from Jesus. So, if it's all resting on your shoulders and you're trying to do it all, and you're noticing that it is taking its toll, or even if you're not noticing it because you've gotten so used to the stress that you're carrying, I encourage you to let it bounce. Let the stressors bounce away while you bounce over to something that slows things down and is better for you. Things and time and commitments can be rearranged. You only get this day, this season, this year, so make the most of it by slowing down and living loved.
Go take on the day!
