Holidays and Stress

I have often thought of October, November, and December as one lengthy string of months full of planning and coordinating because of the holidays and so.many.birthdays. But this year, we have Covid in the mix and it’s a miracle we aren’t all spontaneously combusting from worry, stress, fears, and mental fatigue. I wanted to reminisce on parties gone by and share with you why my stress level isn’t at the “burning gut” stage in spite of all the shiznit going on in the world right now.

So we are wrapping up October and Covid has certainly put a damper on the traditional holiday activities that surround Halloween for many families. About this time of the month, we often host a BYOP – Bring Your Own Pumpkin – carving party where we eat a LOT of food and scoop out a lot of pumpkin guts. One of my favorite parts of the event is after the sun has set, the pumpkins are displayed outside with their carved faces illuminated by the flickering of tealights placed within.

Some years, we have a theme. In 2018, we did all things Outlander and Scottish with themed cookies, whisky, Scottish sweets, and even haggis. Don’t knock the haggis if you haven’t tried it. It’s actually pretty good pair with neeps and tatties with a lovely whisky sauce. A few years before that, we did a zombie theme. Yes, the television show “The Walking Dead” was our inspiration. Decorations were cheap for that! (FYI: cutting brown cardboard into planks makes great, cheap “boards” to board up your windows from the zombie invasion.) Another year was pirate-themed and we had a swashbuckling good time eating sand dollars (super small snickerdoodle cookies) and barbequed parrot legs (chicken drumsticks). Food, pumpkins, decorations, pumpkin carving tools… we like to go all out for these events and that can get pricey, especially if we go with a themed event. I have several totes now of accumulated decorations and serving dishes.

This year, though, we opted to refrain from our traditional revelry for the second year in a row. Last year, we were in a small apartment while our new house was being built. This year, I’m blaming Covid though it’s not just that. We’ve had small family gatherings before but not the more extensive guest list of our BYOP. However, thanks to Covid, our family has seen a reduction in my husband’s work hours (though unemployment for the missing hours has helped balance that) and with the oil and gas industry being what it is right now, I have been more cautious about our expenditures. I work in higher education and never thought we’d have layoffs at my workplace. This year, we did.

So with the germ sharing potential and the financial outlay, we decided to just make next year the best yet. Plus, we moved into this house at the end of May and I still haven’t decorated most of it. Stupid reason, I’m sure, but I want the house to look nice and at least have something on the walls before people come over en masse. At least we’re 90% unpacked now.

There’s still Thanksgiving next month and Christmas in December along with a whole lot of birthdays. I’m a planner. I have a large dry erase board calendar that I truly enjoy filling out with dates and events, appointments, etc. in color coded markers. I love planning stuff out and knowing what’s ahead. I feel a sense of peace to see what’s on the horizon. Covid is not being nice because it throws my future planning out the window. Granted, our lives are trucking along with our modest routine of work, school and church, wearing masks when required and spending a lot of time home. My husband observed we spent the last two Saturdays home all day long. Yep. That’s what happens when your budgeted money for to-go food is gone and going out usually involves shopping. I’m trying to resist the temptation to spend. It’s hard because of the season of holiday shopping so it is best to stay at home and off Amazon.

We did get our eldest’s Halloween costume made this past weekend so I consider that a win. W likes Minecraft so we made a “gray knight” out of cardboard boxes, paint, a LOT of hot glue, and a pair of sweats. The helmet is foam board. It’s getting tested tomorrow at our church event and then they’re having a school costume parade on Friday. We shall see how well it holds up.

The weekend before, we sorted sockets and tools. I am not kidding. Armed with sandwich bags and a sharpie, we sorted his sockets into full sets. Once he had THREE sets of metric, standard, and whatever that third option is, we made additional sets that we packaged as complete as possible, wrote descriptions on the baggies, and set them aside for yet another garage sale. We had a garage sale in June after we moved into the house. I thought we’d be done for at least a year with putting aside garage sale stuff. I guess not. He keeps finding more stuff to purge. After sockets, we sorted wrenches. Yes, we have quite the spicy fun weekends, don’t we?

So here we now are, in the last week of the month with two big holidays staring at me on my calendar like twin shotgun barrels capable of blowing holes in my budget. But you know what? Yeah, it stresses me a little but I’m not as worried about it as I would have been seven years ago. I don’t have that burning ulcer in my gut feeling that I had in our pre-budgeting days. Why? Two reasons.

One. We have a budget. We know where our expenses are, we have sat down and played with the spreadsheet to see what things look like without his income or without my income. We know where we could tighten the belt to make do financially. This feeling of being okay even if life throws us a hard financial punch is only possible because of the difficult choice we made in November 2013 to pull our heads out of our rears, face our fears (okay, maybe it was just me that was scared of our finances), and make those necessary changes. Not feeling great about where you’re at? Browse my other posts where I talk about our financial journey of where we were and how we got to where we are now. They’re the Financial Fridays posts.

And two. We are told in the Scriptures not to worry. The Bible didn’t say it would be easy but it does tell us that we are to not worry about tomorrow. Our pastor actually preached about that last week in Matthew 6:25-34. In verse 27, it asks us “can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Did you know that long-term stress can kill you? That it has such a huge impact on our bodies physically, mentally, emotionally? A 2019 article with the American Institute of Stress notes that stress in the short term “can leave us anxious, tearful and struggling to sleep. But over time, continuously feeling frazzled could trigger heart attacks, strokes, and even suicidal thoughts.”

I can’t control the economy or whether or not our employers decide to have another round of layoffs that leaves us in a financial lurch. I can’t control other people’s actions or inactions in their Covid responses; I can only control my own actions and one of those actions is trusting in God no matter what happens. Sometimes we can’t see why something happens and it doesn’t seem fair but hindsight can often provide clarity.

I had one of those moments when my employer laid off over 30 people in July. My current position involves finding and administering external funding sources and I stayed employed but a couple of years ago, I was a manuscript editor with my employer. I helped faculty with their academic publications prior to submission. I loved what I did, truly enjoyed coming in to work every day excited about what I might be working on. I celebrated with the authors when they were published and helped look at reviewer comments and suggestions on rejections. But then there was a shift in my office and I was asked if I wanted to take on a different role. The editing position was going away despite the interest level in the service. I accepted the new role and started learning this new skill set. Although this position doesn’t give me the same spark of excitement that I have when I am editing, I believe God put me in this role – even though I was reluctant – as a way of positioning me in a more vital position than my previous title would have been. Had I still been a manuscript editor this year, I suspect I would have been laid off.

Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Yeah, I’m eyeballing the upcoming two months with a bit of trepidation thanks to the holidays, birthdays and who knows what will happen after the election. Add in having to replace a broken window on a four-month-old house. Yay for unexpected expense! However, I’m choosing to trust God with all of it and release my worry and my stress. It is not easy but it is what we are called to do. So we try. We try each day to trust and release our worries, our stress, and sometimes we might not let Jesus take that wheel. But the next day, try again. Keep trying to turn your worries over to Him. He’s got big enough shoulders for your burdens plus more.

Stay green, my friends, and may the upcoming months continue to show you silver linings to every situation.