Letting Go

As I write this, Christmas Day is fourteen days away. That’s just two weeks. Yikes! Christmas is approaching and my expectations, as well as my anxiety, are rising.

How about you? As Christmas approaches are your expectations rising?

In Webster’s the first definition of expectation is “a looking forward to; anticipation”. It’s the excitement of seeing how all of the preparations we’re spending so much time, attention and money to get just right unfold. The second definition is “a looking for as due, proper, or necessary”. Applied to this time of year, one definition tends toward the positive and one definition towards the negative. When we get so wrapped up in the expectations of Christmas as those things that we think are due, proper or necessary our expectations have a tendency to cause anxiety and, in the end, dissatisfaction.

Think about it for a moment. What are your expectations of Christmas? What are the due, proper, and necessary things that mean Christmas to you?

Here’s my list:

1. Buying the perfect gift for everyone
2. Preparing a scrumptious Christmas dinner, from scratch, of course
3. Glittering decorations adorning inside and out
4. A tree beautiful enough to grace the pages of Architectural Digest

This is only the beginning. It is due, proper and necessary that I fit in church services and family traditions all the while maintaining family relationships that are happy and peaceful. Does any of this sound familiar?

My list of due, proper, and necessary expectations will certainly not result in expectations of looking forward to Christmas in anticipation. I know. It was my modus operandi for years. And then I learned about the art of letting go.

It happened when my both of my parents lived in an assisted-living facility for dementia patients. The first Christmas they were in the Haven, I kept thinking “It’s not supposed to be this way.” This was not what I thought was due, proper or necessary as far as Christmas was concerned. Slowly it dawned on me that this was Christmas even though all the things I thought made Christmas weren’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to plan and prepare the Christmas dinner with my mom. There would be no unwrapping of gifts around their tree.  Trying to accomplish all the due, proper and necessary expectations kept me from enjoying my parents on their level. It caused even more stress in their lives than was necessary. All of the things I had taken for granted about Christmas I had to let go.

Your life may also be at a place where the things that make up your expectations, those due, proper and necessary things, are not going to happen as they used to. For whatever reason our lives are not as they were when we first started developing Christmas traditions. Some of those reasons are:

1. Managing at least two extended families, yours and your spouses and perhaps ex-spouses
2. The addition of a child either by birth or adoption
3. Parents are older or passed away
4. Children are grown up and have families of their own
5. Married children have additional extended families
6. We may have family relationships that are strained or estranged

We can try to keep all the expectations of due, proper and necessary and experience stress and strain, lack of Christmas joy and reverence, or we can examine our expectations and let go of some of them.

This suggestion may be shocking to you. Everything about our culture shouts that expectations of what is due, proper and necessary is what Christmas is all about. From Black Friday, to secular Christmas music to Christmas movies and TV shows, Christmas is the time when problems are solved, the perfect gift is just waiting under the tree, and all strained family relationships heal in one magical day.

But what about that first Christmas, the one that we have taken a snapshot of and memorialized in our nativity sets and crèches? The idyllic night of angel songs and visits from exotic wise men?

Even Mary and Joseph had expectations that they had to let go. Read the accounts of the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke. As you read make a list of all of the expectations the Holy Family had to let go. You will see that first Christmas in a new way.

• Luke 1:26-38
• Matthew 1:18-25
• Luke 2:1-7
• Matthew 2:1-15

What are some of the expectations you should let go? What gets in your way of enjoying Christmas in all its love, joy and peace? Are there things that get in the way of your family’s enjoyment of Christmas because you can’t let go?

 Dear friend, you are held in the Father’s hand. Let go of those things you think are due, proper, and necessary, the things that come between you and what he deems as due, proper and necessary. As you do, may you experience the warmth of his hand cradling you, drawing you through Christmas and ever closer to him through Jesus, the one this season is all about.

Merry Christmas!

You can hear more about letting go by clicking on the link below. It will take you to the website of mmLearn.org, a service of Morningside Ministries. mmLearn.org is designed for caregivers, both those who work in care facilities and those who care for loved ones at home. In their Prayers for a Caregiver series I recorded “Letting Go“, a devotional upon which this blog post is based. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.