Forty Five Minutes of Christmas, Permission Slip

I recently checked out a new book from the library that an incredibly dear friend [Pieliekamais] recommended. The book is Rising Strong by Brene Brown and I'm LOVING it! Apart from feeling like I've just undergone a several hour long therapy session, the author presents incredibly useful ways to confront, embrace, and work through emotions that we've buried or ignored or have been denying but none the less emotions that are deep rooted and that control the way we interact with people and go throughout our lives.

This book has been VERY eye opening for me and I'd recommend it to anyone for that reason. Mostly through writing my eyes have been opened, over the past few years, to really deep hurts that are ever present in my life. I've slowly been praying through these hurts and keeping a look out for them but I have been without the tools to really confront many of them or haven't known exactly how to work through some of them. This book is helping identify ways to confront many of my yet healed wounds so that I can begin to heal and grow from them instead of just noticing that they are there without knowing how to really address them.

All that said (because I'm really enjoying this book) one small thing that the author touched on was setting too high of expectations. Disappointment comes from having too high of expectations. I am a perfectionist. Perfection is unattainable. So this is an oximoron of sorts, I'm a perfectionist, striving for perfection while knowing that perfection is unattainable. Seems like something needs to change, right? I mean, essentially I am always setting myself up for failure.

December is an incredibly stressful month for me. I love the Christmas season but I want to make it perfect! Ah ha, but I can't make it perfect. So I'm going to slowly drive myself insane all month long and end the Christmas season with that all too familiar feeling of having fallen short? What a great way to enjoy the holiday's right! I'm not completely sure how to fully escape this dilemma (which I've written about here before, so this is nothing new to many of you) but I am going to write myself a permission slip right now. I'm not sure this is exactly what the author of Rising Strong meant when she talked about writing emotional permission slips but it deals with my emotional issues so my permission slip states: I will spend 45 minutes a day on Christmas. Anything that doesn't get accomplished in the 45 minutes doesn't need to be done. Whatever gets accomplished during the 45 minutes of Christmas is perfection.

Baking, decorating, Christmas crafts, Christmas cards, presents that I'm still planning to make, the Christmas cookie get together at our house that I really want to host, all the parties that we'll be attending, shopping (I think we've very little shopping left), Christmas books and scripture reading that I have planned each day for my kiddo, the holiday parade... I'll likely spend more than 45 minutes a day on certain days, like party days or parade days, but 45 minutes a day is all I need to get in. (I hope that doesn't sound like a lot... that doesn't sound like a lot to me) That's really only about 18 hours from here on out and I probably spent close to that just on Christmas cards last year.

Merry Christmas!