12:00:01 2015

At that moment when night turns to a new day and the year changes from one to the next does anything magical really happen?

I believe it’s kind of natural to think so – to hope so – as the ball drops, the champagne comes bubbling out, confetti falls, people kiss, and the clock reads 12:00:01. The reality is, as my dad put it a few days ago, the same problems and challenges that we carried through the year we left behind accompany us into the year that lies ahead.

Still, it is rather logical to view what we do refer to as a new year as a blank canvas awaiting all of the colors that we will add to it during the 365 days that will make up the year that lies ahead. Thus, I cannot help but share the hope of those who do hope for a bit of magic in the coming year.

It is a good time, I believe, to more than hope for a better year. I do not make “new year’s resolutions,” rather, I create my list of goals for the coming year. I have done this for several years, and lately the goals are much more specific. I have even begun to create mini plans and timelines in which I want to achieve those goals.

That’s not to say my way is the “right” way, first of all, nor is it to say that i achieve all of my goals each and every year. On the contrary, I have the same goals on my list year after year sometimes. I have set out to break a certain time at the 5k distance, and I have had that goal on my list for several years now, due to injury, changing priorities, etc. Some aspects of my personality that need work appear on my list often too. Though I can sometimes note improvements, I am also aware of the work that remains to be done.

I am indeed carrying the same challenges into 2015 that I faced in 2014 – I am still seeking a job. I am still dealing with some injury concerns. I am still working on some personality issues – and I always will be. But I do look forward to the coming year. Moving forward with my career is certainly one of my goals as is once again challenging myself through at least one race of 10 kilometers or more. I will have several other goals on that list as well. Some of those goals are exciting for me and some seem quite daunting.

As you look forward to 2015, I hope that you look forward to it with a sense of anticipation rather than dread.

Each new year is indeed like a canvas waiting to be painted upon. Paint with those colors that you like, and when someone or something changes your painting or mutes your bright colors, do the best you can with the shape that your new picture is taking, and always make it your own.

Only time will tell what will happen over the next 12 months, but it is both exciting, and honestly somewhat foreboding, to reach the end of a year with the picture complete and to wonder what we will have created as we near the end of 2015.

Until next time, I’ll be listening, for your new year’s goals and ideas – if you should like to share.

Happy New Year!

Because It’s Christmas

Indeed it was a life-sized snow globe, shining bright against the dark sky with its royal blue base, a lovely winter scene backdrop, and “snow-covered” pine trees in the foreground. People were standing in a short line to step into the snow globe and pose for a family picture, an engagement photo, or just to say they stood in a snowglobe.

We chose not to join those in that particular line at the Toledo Zoo on a Saturday evening just after Thanksgiving 2013. We waited in a line to get into the parking lot for about 20 minutes, got on a packed shuttle bus – though with a very cheerful crowd, and waited about 10 minutes in the ticket line all just to walk around the zoo in the dark on a sub 30* night to see “The Lights Before Christmas.” It was indeed cold and crowded on a holiday weekend, but it was a fun date night with my husband. And yes, I’d do it again,  why, because it’s Christmas.

I have gone out running, or walking with my Honey, in the dark and the cold, when in January or February I’d be nesting in the house on those dark, cold nights, just because I wanted to see the neighbor’s Christmas lights, and I know other people who have done, or will do, the same.

I know many of us bake more stuff in about two weeks time than we will bake for the rest of the year in total, and I expect many of us eat more baked stuff, have more peppermint mochas, eat more spiced nuts, and eat more cheese ball and crackers than we will eat the rest of the year combined as well. Why, because it’s Christmas.

I have now watched White Christmas, as is our family tradition, but I watched it by myself. Maybe someone will pull it out the weekend we are home after Christmas, and we’ll sort of watch it together but will talk through most of it. We’ll do what other families I know do and either sing the “Sisters” song together or talk about when we used to perform it for the parents.

I have sung “Frosty the Snowman” along with Jimmy Durante while wrapping gifts, and I will occasionally sing “Merry Christmas Darling” with Karen Carpenter. I’ll dance a bit to “All I Want for Christmas is You” when Mariah Carey’s voice rings out from the radio, or the smart phone.

I have already, and likely will every year, have a few tears in my eyes when I sing “Silent Night” with those gathered together to worship during Advent services or at Christmas Eve service because the song will forever remind me of Christmases past when we all sat together in one, pretty crowded, pew in northern Michigan for Christmas Eve service before my sister’s moved away and before Grandma passed away. And I will feel the same reverence and sacred awareness of what Christmas means to those of us who do celebrate it as a religious holiday when I hear “O Holy Night” and listen to or sing those lyrics, “It is the night of our dear savior’s birth,” because it is Christmas, a time to remember that love and hope personified entered this dark world two thousand years ago and lives on to this day.

Some day I might get my picture taken in a giant snow globe, freeze my behind off going for a walk in the dark in the neighborhood just to see the lights, have both a peppermint mocha and cookies in the same evening, or attend a midnight mass -.because it’s Christmas, and that’s reason enough.

To those of you celebrating the Festival of Lights for a few days more, Happy Hanukkah. To those celebrating Christmas, I do wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays?

It was my intention to write a light, witty post this week about those things I would call the crazy makers of Christmas, wrapping your tree in lovely lights and then plugging them in to find out the strand right in the middle doesn’t work – though it had just worked 10 minutes earlier when you plugged each strand in to test them; or maybe trying to drive through a shopping center parking lot which, if it isn’t bad enough already in a college town, has become like a dodge ’em course just a few days before Christmas; or maybe doing the cookie tray shuffle while baking 10 dozen cookies that you really “shouldn’t” eat since you don’t want to be one of those people who gain 15 extra pounds during the holidays.

That post just was not coming together for me. I have not been able to find the lightness that I would need to write a fun post like that.

Though I generally totally love Christmas, I’m not really feeling like it’s the most wonderful time of the year right now. You may wonder why. I do too.

My Christmas tree is up and glowing with white lights, shiny, crystal ice cycles, sparkly snowflakes, and luminescent snowball ornaments. We even have lovely gifts under the tree, and those gifts I needed to send north to my sister and her family have all arrived safely already.

I have the Hershey’s kisses to make peanut butter blossom cookies and peppermint blossom cookies. I have chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, butterscotch chips, peppermint extract, and almond extract to make any and every other cookie recipe that I remember enjoying growing up. I had time to start baking last week, but I just didn’t want to.

Fact is, I am okay basically. My family is fine for the most part. We all have our aches and pains, and some minor injuries and sicknesses have occurred these last few days and weeks, but everyone is okay. My husband and I have money to buy gifts and to eat well this holiday season. We have heat and light in our home.

Yes, I need a job, yet I am finally free from being a student officially. As I think about the stress I was feeling last year at this time, preparing for finals after one of the toughest semesters of my life, I am so glad that I have completed that chapter. So I don’t have finals stress, and not having found a job yet has allowed me more time to enjoy this time of the year.

I’m not really enjoying this time of year, and I know I’m not alone. I also know that, like me, you probably just cannot seem to snap out of it.

I know that for some this time of the year reminds you of lost loved ones, painful holidays rather than pleasant times, or how little you may have or can do for your families due to financial strains. I know that some people feel the pressure to be the perfect parent, the perfect performer, or the perfect hostess.

I know that some of us live with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), struggle with depression, or battle anxiety disorders now and throughout the year. I don’t really know if the holidays make those conditions worse. I know that, when things are not going well with my anxiety disorder, even little things or happy events – like getting on the city bus, going for a swim or a run, or seeing the ballet I wanted to see, are like facing monumental challenges. For me, I would say this time of year is not particularly worse; it just depends on how well controlled the anxiety and depression are when December comes. For some though, December may in itself be a trigger for depression and anxiety.

Psychology is not my area of expertise, thus, I did some research. It has long been widely reported that the suicide rate is at its highest during the holidays. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports that the suicide rate is, in fact, the lowest in December.^2″  Data collected by The Annenberg Public Policy Center supports the research presented by the CDC, according to the CDC website.

Recently I learned that a 17-year-old, the child of friends of some of my family members, chose to end his life last week. Whether or not this is the leading time of year for suicides doesn’t really matter to the grieving parents right now.

Whether everyone in the church, in the neighborhood, or in the family is in great spirits doesn’t matter to that one who is feeling empty or lonely or broken right now either.

Whether or not it makes sense to me or to you, someone else may be in pain, in fear, or in distress right now. While we cannot take on the burdens of every hurting person, and while we are not even qualified to take on the burdens of some, we might want to try to listen. I know it’s hard to hear, because often the one who may be in the most pain or in the most fear say the least.

I know many of the people who take the time to read my blog. I  know you are intelligent, kind, awesome people who do reach out to others. Together we do make our corners of the world a bit better, and we can make people’s holidays a bit happier.

Until next time, I’ll be listening because I’ve been there; I know what it’s like to feel fear for “no reason,” to feel sad when I really shouldn’t, and to feel like no one understands. I also know what it’s like when someone does care, even if they don’t really understand – especially if they don’t really understand.

PS

I know my audience is not vast, but just in case you may be reading this and are in need of help, people do care. Contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK because someone will be able to help.

For help in working through anxiety, visit http://www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/generalized-anxiety-disorder-gad.htm . I have found this site to be very helpful for me.

For more information about SAD, visit http://www.psychiatry.org/seasonal-affective-disorder

And for more information about dealing with depression in general, visit the same website, American Psychiatric Association, http://www.psychiatry.org/mental-health

Befriending the Ghosts of Christmases Past

The Dickens classic A Christmas Carol has been performed and narrated for years in forms ranging from classical theatre to a Disney cartoon. The familiar tale takes readers or viewers along for Scrooge’s journey to a change of heart one Christmas. To assist with this change of heart, Scrooge is visited by three ghosts, one of whom was the ghost of Christmas past.

For me, the phrase “the ghost of Christmas past” has come to embody a personal and somewhat emotional connection to the Christmases of days gone by.

The ghost, or ghosts as I often think of “it” in the plural sense, is there each time I take out my little “bottle brush” Christmas tree, as my dad calls those faux trees that fold into their boxes at the end of each season. As I unfold the branches, I begin to think about the ornaments I will see when I open the boxes scattered about the room. Eventually, I find the one ornament I know I will find yet am always oddly surprised to see again; I think I had missed it for a few years, having packed it somewhere other than with the Christmas decorations during one of my moves.

That little ornament is a little soft tan colored dove with an olive branch in its mouth.

One day many, many years ago when my sister and I were young, our grandma took us shopping and allowed each of us to choose an ornament for her tree. I remember looking for that ornament among her things as we cleaned out her apartment and sorted through the Christmas decorations after she had passed away.

It is not only those Christmas ornaments, from grandma, my parents, Aunt Carol and my late Uncle Bob, and from friends both past and present, that I hang on my tree each year, but also the music of the season that is a reminder for me of days gone by.

The rather obscure group First Call released a CD several years ago entitled “Evening in December.” The title track begins with a soloist talking about an evening in December on which she is remembering and quickly returns to her present setting at which the family will be gathering soon:

“This old house still feels the same. All the family will be here in just awhile. I hope daddy gets here first to build the fire; he’s the only one who has that special touch, and my sister with her kids, and my grandma who I love so very much. Oh, I’m glad we’ll be together on this evening in December…”

The memories of those evenings in December are so real that it’s as though I am watching a play, the set lit up right in front of me, seeing the fireplace in the residence at the hotel my parents owned for several years when I was “the soloist,” the single woman who had come home to see my family, waiting for dad to start a fire, waiting for them to go pick up grandma from her apartment in a nearby town, and waiting for grandpa to come over from the room in the hotel he called home, waiting for my sister and my young niece and nephew to come over. I can see all of us, my two younger sisters too, all gathered in the living room by the fireplace, cats and a dog wandering among the wrapping paper and the kids spread out on the floor. I can see the amber light coming down from a ceiling fan fixture above and the lights of the tree changing colors in the corner of the room.

Those years are well behind me now. Grandpa passed away, then grandma the following year. My sister and her family have moved several hours north. The younger sisters are young women now, and one has been married for three years. I have been married for over 8 years myself and have family in law and even the granddaughter of my husband on the way.

Since I have been married, I was only hone once in the first six years. I spent our first Christmas together with near strangers, family in law and their friends. We spent one Christmas Eve in the ER at U of M hospital with my elderly mother-in-law. I spent yet another Christmas opening my gifts alone as the stress of coping with an aging mother and an emotional sister had taken a toll on my husband.

From those difficult years, I learned some beneficial lessons. I learned that life’s sorrows, anxieties, and health problems do not take a break for the holidays, in fact, I expect some of those problems are magnified during the “most wonderful time of the year.”

I also developed more empathy because, while I was missing my family – who I usually got to see at least for New Year’s if I was not going to see them at Christmas – some people didn’t know when they would see their loved one again because their loved one was overseas, perhaps in great danger or perhaps in a peaceful area, but in either case, on the other side of the world while family missed them and could only hope and pray for a safe return by next the Christmas.

Finally, I realized that the ghosts of my Christmases past bring back all the good memories of Christmas for me. The pain I felt during those tougher, lonely years was in a way a gift that allowed me to realize that the main reason it hurt so much was because I had been fortunate to have memories of times that were good enough to miss.

That realization helped me to appreciate so much more how special Christmas 2013 was, when I got to go home on Christmas day, with my husband, to be with my parents, my younger sisters, and my brother-in-law, and to use technology to be able to spend some time with my sister and the nieces and nephew who live so many miles north.

Christmas 2013 is now Christmas past, and Christmas 2014 lies ahead. I will not be with my family on Christmas day, but I will be mindful of others who cannot be with their families, and I will be grateful for all of the memories that the ghosts bring back to me each Christmas, for I am truly blessed.

Until next time, I’ll be listening – to Christmas music, but not to “Evening in December” just yet, because it still makes me cry.