The Half Finished Box

I have been thinking about a certain Christmas tradition the Coxes had while I was growing up. My mother Lucille was quite a seamstress--as I have said before I literally did not have a store-bought piece of clothing until I was late in high school. She made all of my clothes...and I looked pretty hip.

One of our Christmas traditions which lasted up until just a few years before her death, was the "almost finished box." You would unwrap a present from my parents and inside would be mostly made dress with pins still in it, a spool of thread and assorted other sewing paraphernalia that were needed to finish up the dress and there would always be a note: "I ran out of time. I will finish it next week." When I was a child, I thought all mothers gave their children such things. But I found out later that this wasn't so (or sew). Mother would stay up very late the last few nights before Christmas, her knee up against the feed, her mouth full of pins, running that Singer or Pfaff or Bernina just as fast as she could, and yet, there simply were not enough hours to get the last thing done. Woe be to her if one of those last days before Christmas fell on a Sunday, because the sewing machine was NEVER run on Sundays. And she was so very tired by the time Christmas Day rolled around and tried to hide it. If you were the one who received the box with the with the partially made item in it, you didn't say anything except "Oh. Mother this is beautiful!" Like most of us, when Lucille got tired, she also got a bit touchy.

I think this reminds me of someone else I know. I often do give a "lick and a promise" but unlike my mother, I DON'T get it finished the next week, which she always would do. Advent is so very crazy for so many of us---I know I have had things I have wanted to do this Christmas that I am not going to get done---those soft little scarves I was going to make for all the women in the office; that Messiah Sing-In that I had intended to go to this afternoon; carolling with one of the churches---those things are not going to get done (well, okay, maybe the carolling will happen if I am intentional about it).

I don't think that "preparing our hearts for Christmas" really means having too many expectations of ourselves, and then feeling guilty because we do not live up to them. Maybe for those of us who try to cram it all in, preparing means giving ourselves some slack. The line between "giving yourself some slack" and "giving into your own laziness" is a hard one for me to discern. I have decided to err on the side of "slack" a bit more, in terms of resting when I could be organizing my house (I AM hoping to do that after Christmas though, just so you don't think I am lazy :-} and crocheting when I could be cleaning.

Does this resonate with you? I know a lot of folks that seem to have this same struggle. I wish you peace, I wish you rest, I wish you joy.