Christmas preparations (i.e. putting up the decorations, menu planning, gift wrapping) for me usually start around mid-October. I want my efforts to be “worth it”, so I prefer to have everything up at the soonest possible time (and I put off taking them down for as long as I can) so my family can enjoy the festive atmosphere longer. I  finish most of my Christmas shopping by June-July. By “most”, I mean 90-95% of my list. Obviously,  I like being prepared. I do not like the feeling of being rushed. I also do not like having to go to malls along with thousands of others who are in panic mode as they do their last minute shopping.

I have had a system that has worked for me for the past five Christmases in our family. I would get things done early, and last minute stress-inducing errands were, for the most part, kept at a minimum.

I had a system and it worked for the past years– except this one.

This year all systems flew out the window. With the new place came a new look, new color scheme, new feel, new schedule….new, new, new. I am not even close to being finished (as I would define the word), and now Christmas is already knocking at my door.

I haven’t done my Christmas shopping. It was just this week that I had the chance to go and buy new decorations that would be fit for our new place. The Christmas tree is up, but that’s about it. The rest of the house is still in a rather chaotic state (Dennis would say I’m exaggerating, but I really feel it is in chaos).

Now you know where I’m coming from when I tell you that I wish to finish EVERYTHING before the week ends. You would also understand if I stay up late at night trying to fix the house, right?

Last night, I was so focused on decorating when Alyanna came and started asking for my attention. (side note: I think that if the kids have to start begging for our attention, something’s off…)

ALYANNA: “Mom, dad said we could sleep in your room tonight.” (At this time, Dennis just left the house to do something for someone)

ME: (Not wanting to be interrupted, I forget to even stop and look at her.) “Yes, love. But you cannot wait up for me tonight, okay? I need to finish fixing this part tonight.”

ALYANNA: “Mom, can you please stop fixing that first so you could be with us in your room?”

ME: (Still preoccupied with my thing, I don’t stop. In fairness to me, I was trying not to fall off, hold up the garland, and put in the decorations all at the same time so I had to focus.) “No, Alyanna. you would have to go sleep without me. Okay? Good night love!”

ALYANNA: “But mom, you have to read this to us first. So can you please stop muna?”

ME: (Hehe I’m ashamed of myself as I’m writing this!) “Love, please?” …… (I look at her, but I don’t even take a look at the book she wants me to read.)

ALYANNA: *Now trying to assert herself even more, but still in a respectful tone* “Mom, you haven’t read the Bible to us yet. You still have to read the Bible to us before we sleep. That’s always more important than finishing the decorations, right? “

ME: *IMMEDIATELY drops the garland and the decorations on the floor, jumps off the stool, and goes straight to Alyanna* (Now, I see the book she was holding. It was the Bible.)

Sabi ko nga. *blush*

“YES!!! You’re right Alyanna! Nothing can be more important than reading the Bible and putting you to bed. You’re right! Thanks for reminding me love. I’m sorry ha? Wow, good thing you reminded me!! Thank you talaga!!” (I’m deliberately using an exaggeratedly-excited tone here in an attempt to make up for the momentary neglect. Hehe!)

Really, I do like to say thank you to you, my daughter, for reminding me of what is really important. All too often we get caught up with what we feel we need to accomplish and to finish as if our happiness depended on it. “I have to do this or else…”, “I have to fix this or else….”, “I have to….or else….”, and we threaten ourselves into saying yes to doing all these things, thereby justifying whatever it is that’s taking our time away from the relationships we have that really matter.

Let’s face it: there will be lots of things that most probably won’t get done— perhaps until the season ends. We have to learn to say “So, what?” and decide to use our time to be with the people we love.

So what if my house isn’t fully dressed up this year?

So what if I would have to serve take-out food to my guests this season?

So what if I would have to use crappy-looking gift wrappers this Christmas?

I will still enjoy this season and build great memories with my family and friends. I will make the most of the time we have for the remainder of this year. I will grab this opportunity to once again teach my children the reason why we celebrate Christmas (and contrary to what I communicated last night, it is NOT to have nice Christmas decorations at home); And I will take this time to remind them of God’s love and faithfulness.

More importantly, I will read the Bible to my kids EVERY day and night, even if it means getting interrupted from whatever it is I am doing….Most likely, it’s not that important anyway.

When I am unable to clock in and write for quite a while, it could only mean one of two things: either my days have been so boring and unproductive there’s really nothing worth writing about, OR my days have been so full and unusually on-the-go that though there is much to write about I couldn’t find time to sit down and actually do it. In my case it is the latter.

For the past days that I have been unable to write any new posts, I have kept a list of things that I wanted to write about, since thoughts would keep popping up in my head as I went about each day. Every time I attempted to write, something would come up and I just end up just jotting down my random thoughts so I could get back to them later within the day…or within the week (….or month??), as my schedule would permit. (Hehe…Okay, I admit I just added that last phrase to make me sound “legitimately busy”! *blush*)

Anyway, the other day I finally had time to sit and blog. I woke up extra early that day because I decided it was high time for me to do something about the interruptions. Since they are a given part of motherhood and life in general, I wanted to at least try to minimize its effects by doing most of my work when everyone else was still sound asleep.

So there I was, despite the temptation to cozy up in bed and go back to sleep, I managed to open my eyes, pull myself out of bed, and turn on my laptop.

I was determined to do this. I was going to write again, and I was excited to finally share all those thoughts that have been sitting on my notepad for weeks. I opened my drawer, reached for the pad….

Wait. Where are my notes??

“A place for everything and everything in its place.”…I live by this so I am certain this is the pad I used to write everything down and this is where I left it. I am sure it wasn’t me who tore out a sheet from this particular pad!

Of course. There was only one other person who would do such a thing—my love, my sweetheart, my very dear husband.

Uuurrrggghh! How could you be so careless my husband?!?? Do you realize what you have done???

I am sure God was on my side because right at that moment when I wanted to shake Dennis to wake him up and ask him a question which I already knew the answer to, right at that very moment, he woke up. Oh, God. Thank you! You really will for me to rub it in now!

“Did you tear out a piece of paper from this pad??” Note: My voice was down and calm here.

Steady dear hubby just looked at me and said, “I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Everything I wanted to write about was there!”

Husband-in-trouble: *blank* closes his eyes, as if trying to go back to sleep again.

Me: “Do you even care that it’s gone? Why did you have to be the one who would throw away all those ideas??” (Oh, yes…it’s that melodramatic time of the month for me during this time…my very first day.)  Note: my voice is still down here…but I made sure I got to communicate my frustration. Was I ever ready to prolong this drama!

Wise dear hubby just rubs my back and says: “Love, remember? Overlook, oversee, overwhelm??”

Total manipulation! Using the lessons we taught other couples the night before to make me forgive him!?

Me: *turning away, trying very hard not to laugh at this tactic* “Nah! I wasn’t there. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m exempted.”

Clever dear husband: *rubbing my back* “Sige na. Overlook, oversee, overwhelm, diba?? Love, overlook, oversee, overwhelm??”

At that moment, I just caved in and started laughing. I knew I had to practice what we just preached.

Fine then. Overlook. Oversee. Overwhelm.

Ah, the (dis)advantages of being married to a preacher!

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In case you were wondering, here’s the gist of that “over” thing:

1. Overlook: “I’ll let this one pass.”

Choose your battles.

2. Oversee: “We have to talk; This might become an issue unless resolved.”

Goal: Resolve and restore…not to point out faults.

3. Overwhelm:   “I love you and I will choose to forgive you because I myself have been loved and forgiven.”

To overcome conflict, you need to understand and experience the overwhelming love and forgiveness that comes through Christ.

Poor blog. You always seem to get bumped off my schedule as soon as something seemingly more urgent comes up. Please don’t get the impression that you are not important to me, because you are. Why, I do spend a considerable amount of time updating you, don’t I? I mean, I do wake up earlier in the morning just so I can fill you in on my thoughts and my life, right?

So how come it’s been dayS (emphasis on the plural form intended) since I last took the time to sit down and update you? How come I manage to find the time to open my Facebook account yet seem to always be too busy to actually write something worthwhile on YOUR page? How come my intention of writing rarely becomes reality once I feel that my schedule is filled with “must-do-this-now” activities?

Ah. It’s always a lot easier to do less meaningful things. It requires less work from my brain cells, overriding the fact that it does take up a lot of my precious time.

Ah. It is always the important things that suffer once the seemingly urgent start calling for my attention. The urgent stuff is quick to deceive me into thinking I was able to get “more” things done, thus making me think I have accomplished more during the day. Of course, “deceive” is the word at play here. The reality is, once I neglect to do the important in favor of the seemingly urgent, it won’t be long before I become a slave of my schedule, constantly trying to manage the urgent instead of successfully fulfilling what’s important.

So note to self: Please don’t confuse what is urgent with what is really important. If you are not careful to do the latter, it will soon start screaming “URGENT!!!” just to get your attention. And you wouldn’t want that. You want to be on top of your schedule, having your priorities in place. The other option— getting toppled over by activities because your priorities are all over the place (or nonexistent), is just way too stressful.

And we don’t want the unnecessary stress. Especially not with the coming holiday season.

In my previous post “Go Ahead, Have Sex”, I summarized my points by addressing two groups of people—the single men/women, and couples. As soon as I left the house, I realized that I left out an important group of people who I feel I needed to address too… the third group of people I will be “dedicating” this post to is for those who are saying (or somewhat thinking): “I’ve done it. I’ve had experiences outside the context of marriage. Now what?”

There’s just a couple of things I’d like to say:

• There is no such thing as “special sin”. Sin is sin—that’s truth number one.

• Truth number two is all of us have sinned. Not one of us can say that we haven’t messed up. All of us, at some point (in my case, at many points! Hehe), have said or done certain things that we wish we could just erase. But of course, we all know that we really can’t erase the past.

• Here’s another truth I’d like to share with you: Though there is no way for us to erase the past, God is more than able to transform and redeem it. Don’t ask me how please, I really don’t know how He does it (He’s God that way). All I know is this:

**Warning: I am basing everything I am about to say on the Bible. Either you take my word for it, or you might want to check it out for yourself. If I come across as “preachy” (yikes I sure hope you don’t judge me for it!)– which I have a feeling you MIGHT since I am talking about the Bible– well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. **

1. Christ died for ALL of us and ALL our sins so that we can have life and experience it at its fullest. (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8,9, John 10:10)
2. God is a God of second chances. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a NEW creation. The old has gone, the new has come!”
3. God is a God who  forgives. 1 John 1:9 says “If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.” Oh, wow…not only does He forgive, He also cleanses us!
4. There’s really now other way around it. If we are to fulfill God’s standard, we seriously need help. We need to allow Christ to do His work in us. I’m not just talking about help in the area of sex and virginity…I’m saying we seriously need God’s grace (through Christ) in every area of our lives— for me it means needing help even in trying not to go crazy when I’m feeling overwhelmed with taking care of the kids and trying not to snap at my husband….or controlling myself when I have PMS. I need GRACE!!!                                                                                                                                                                     We ALL need grace.