By Andrea Goebel
God’s Way
Dishes sat in the sink and on the counter, tubs of Christmas decorations filled each room and laundry awaited washing and folding. The whole house looked in need of some TLC.
It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My husband lay sick in bed, the kids were burning energy in our playroom, and I longed for time to myself to find some calm.
So I laced up my shoes and escaped to our basement to walk laps. I felt so frenzied I couldn’t form the words to pray the rosary — a calming routine for me — and I just paced restlessly.
A few minutes into my respite, I heard my son call to me. He needed help with something. I accepted the fact that perhaps this was not the time to exercise, and I walked upstairs.
After tending to my son, I looked around the room where my kids played. This was not the day I had envisioned. My husband and I had planned to decorate for Christmas, yet I didn’t feel motivated to put everything up by myself. At the same time, I felt this restless urgency that I had to have everything up by the next day, the first Sunday of Advent.
I needed something, but I didn’t know what. So I prayed.
Moments later, the most random thought popped into my head: color. I took out a coloring book a friend had gifted me, grabbed a tub of markers and crayons, and sat down at our kitchen table.
A few minutes later, my son and daughter joined me. They opened up an oversized book filled with Christmas images and chose the pictures they would turn into masterpieces. As we sat there complimenting each other on the colors we chose and the effort we put into our creations, I felt the tension ease in both my brain and body, and I realized that if I had given in to my self-induced pressure to hurriedly complete the tasks awaiting me, I would have missed this opportunity to embrace time with them.
It was OK that our house would not be fully decorated for Christmas by Dec. 1, that I hadn’t purchased all of our presents, and that I no longer believed I had to find the “perfect” way to prepare for Christmas.
For so many years prior, I had sought to find peace at Christmas through these endeavors. Now, I realized that slowing my pace, listening to God’s call and spending quality time with my family was far more important than rushing through my to-do list.
I was reminded of sisters Martha and Mary: Martha, who rushed around the house, doing “all the things” to ready the house for Jesus, and Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and rested in his presence. Jesus himself remarked, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her” (Luke 10:41-42).
This Advent, I pray I need only “one thing” — Jesus — and time spent readying my heart for his coming. As joyous as it is to participate in all the extras the month of December offers, perhaps there is another way to prepare our hearts for his birth.
God is love, and he sent Jesus to us in a tangible form of his love. St. Mother Teresa once said, “Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start.”
This Advent, God is calling me to love my husband and children more intentionally, spend more time with them, and share God’s love with them.
Let us focus our Advent preparations on love — opening our hearts to accept God’s love, showing him our love, and loving the people in our lives. The more time we spend preparing our hearts for him to enter at Christmas, the more joyful our celebrations will truly be.