Three More Days!

Really? The kids have been giving me the countdown to Christmas a few times a day for the last week since our advent calendar arrived from Texas. It is good to have the reminder, but also a little unnerving. Especially when you have had sick kids for weeks and had many plans that have not materialized.

The plans that I am most disappointed in are the ones that involved school, crafting, and most especially the spiritual preparations. I have excuses every year, and think I will be better about it the next Advent season. I peruse all the material that media can offer and get all these inspiring ideas, and I feel like such a failure when I don't actually do any of them. Why don't I do them?

I don't have a plan. Lots of ideas, but no plan. Too many ideas, really. Planning takes time, and I convince myself I have no time. But I do. It is simply wasted by not rejoicing in the time I DO have and making the most of it. My kids are notorious for taking forever to get simple things accomplished. Even the most basic, like getting dressed. How much of their problem has been learned by my lack of reverence for the time I have been given. It is a gift. We will run out of it, eventually. Whether it is the end of the world, or the end of our life, we are only given a finite amount of time to spend on this beautiful planet, preparing our souls for all of eternity. How will I use that gift? how will I teach my children to use it? 

This advent season has not been well planned by me, but fortunately the Holy Spirit and my guardian angel have been whispering in my ear loud enough for me to hear and LISTEN. I am beginning to see a pattern of Advent and the way I have been spending them the last decade or so. If I get caught up in all the frivolous distractions of the world, and do not have a focused plan, I trudge through the season feeling angry and disappointed when I fail to complete various items on my list of things to do, see, read, pray, etc. In reality, if I just had a plan, and committed to it, progress would occur.

This is a great reflection to me of the spiritual life being played out in miniature every Advent Season. If Christmas morning is any indication of how I will show up in heaven when my gift of time has run its course, I might be ill prepared. I want to have a plan, a course mapped out on how to spend my days traveling toward an eternal Christmas where Christ is perpetually born into the manger of my heart. I do not have an Advent Calendar telling me how many more days I have on this pilgrimage to heaven, so I must spend my time wisely, diligently preparing my heart and mind for the inevitable moment. Otherwise it might catch me unprepared.

Immaculate Conception

Did you know when you were eight years old that the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was a feast of the Virgin Mary? I did not. My eldest does. So on this PILGRIMAGE to heaven that we are travelling together, she has learned a lesson in the spiritual life far beyond what I knew at her age. I am hoping that while we are on this most treacherous stretch of the journey in raising and educating saints that I am able to arrive at the destination I most long for, eventhough I may be tired, worn out and MESSY from the voyage.