5 Ways to Embrace Your Limits During the Holidays
My husband embracing his limits in 2019, the most stressful Christmas of our marriage
It was 2019 and I had two kids in diapers. We were driving home from my parents’ house downstate when a terrible realization caught me by surprise as I was scanning my inbox…
The BIG Shutterfly sale ends at midnight.
I had made it a tradition to make my family members calendars with our pictures from the previous year. Everyone LOVED them, and so naturally, I wanted to fulfill their hopes again year after year.
Immediately my heart rate went up and I thought, “I need to finish these calendars by midnight.” When we got home in the afternoon, we quickly unpacked, started a load of laundry, and put the kids down for a nap while I frantically uploaded pictures.
When they woke up I thought - you know what? Today would be the perfect day to get a Christmas tree. So with a toddler and a baby in tow, we went Christmas tree shopping.
But of course, when we got home, we needed to DECORATE the tree. And while we’re at it, we might as well decorate the whole house.
I found myself decorating the tree with fragile ornaments scattered everywhere all over the house shouting at my toddler every five seconds, “don’t touch that!” while my 10 month old was climbing up my leg wanting to be held.
After bedtime, I went back to working on the calendar until he woke up to nurse. While nursing him, I worked on the calendar with one hand and submitted the order just under the wire at 11:50pm.
The morning after this explosion of a day, I woke up with a deep sense of loss. I wondered, “Is this how God wants me to enter into celebrating His birth - as a disheveled, distracted mess?”
Can you relate to this scenario?
Please tell me I’m not the only one.
If you’re anything like me, I tend to put a LOT of unrealistic expectations on myself during the holidays.
But, often these expectations dictate my behavior and I end up running around like I am driven by an invisible whip. I push past my limits, hustle through to get it done, and usually miss the moment and the meaning of the season. You too?
Is there another way?
If you are looking for a way out of this pattern, the good news is – there is another way. The world tells us that we need to push past our limits in order to make the holidays a success. We must over-extend ourselves, over-eat, over-buy, and over-commit.
But, let’s consider a woman who, faced with overwhelming expectations and the reality of her limits, wondered aloud with all of us, “how will this be?”
If you’d like to have a little pause to ponder more on this concept, I’ve created a little guided prayer practice for you:
Mary simply brought her limitations to God and asked, “how?” And the answer?
“I will overshadow you. I will fill you with myself.”
God did not ask Mary to be superwoman. He did not ask her to push past her limits to do what He asked. All she had to do was surrender the limits of her humanity and say, “yes.”
Is there a way we can embrace and surrender our limitations to God like Mary did?
The challenge is, the expectations that cause us to push past our limits are often firmly ingrained in our brains. We have learned them over time from either our family of origin or some other way. And so in order to form a NEW, healthier pattern in response, it is going to take some intentionality. And, it’s going to take practice. A lot of practice.
So I'm writing this for me - and for you, to help us learn a new pathway. One that helps us to embrace the limits of our humanity in this season and to enter the season more mindfully!
So, here are 5 ways to embrace your limitations during the holidays:
1. Reflect on Your Priorities:
Before launching into the chaos of the season, ask - "What really matters in this season of life?"
Write down or keep a mental note on what you want to focus your time and attention on THIS year. You are in a different stage of life every time Christmas comes around. So what is most important to you and your family this year?
Maybe you have a relative that is sick, and you want to intentionally take time to be with them.
Maybe your church community is going through a crisis and you want to be available and present.
Maybe you are about to be an empty nester and this is your last chance to spend Christmas with your kids before things change forever.
I don’t know what it is for you, but taking the time to determine the season you’re in can help you set your priorities.
Last year, for example, I wanted to intentionally disciple my kids and church community to love the most marginalized. Thinking through these things ahead of time have allowed me to narrow my focus on these things and do step #2...
2. Practice Saying No:
Family and church expectations can run especially high during this season. Allow yourself the grace to say "no."
No, I don't need to go to ALL the holiday parties.
No, I don't need to bake 12 dozen cookies for the Christmas event this year.
One year, I was liberated by simply saying to myself, "No, I don't have to put up ALL the Christmas decorations."
Setting boundaries empowers you to say yes to the things that truly align with your values. Consider: what might you need to cut back this year in order to be more fully present in the moment - to God and to others?
This year, I've decided to gift my family members "experiences" instead of physical gifts because this aligns more with my 3 priorities:
I want to be conscious of my buying choices and whether or not they are equitably sourced (this is really hard to do on most physical products), a gift card experience is a safe bet.
Doing “experience” gifts instead of physical gifts frees me up to spend less of my time at a hurried pace, frantically searching for things and more time on the things that matter most.
PRESENCE is a priority to me, and I want to give my family a gift that will help them be more present - which experiences can do :). We will see how it goes!
3. Slow Down:
Embrace the pace of the season. Instead of rushing from one task to another, savor moments of rest and reflection. It's in these quieter moments that you may experience God's presence most deeply.
I used to have a rule that there were NO Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. While good in intent at the time, I had this rule when I was in my twenties and so setting up all the decorations over a weekend with my parents wasn’t a big deal.
Now that I have young kids, just setting up the Christmas village itself is a full day event with breaks and snacks and constant reminders to teach my kids how to be careful with porcelain figurines. So, trying to set it everything up on a weekend feels like a mad dash. By the end of the weekend I am exhausted, irritable, have yelled at my kids, and have a pile of broken Christmas decorations to prove it.
This year, when my youngest, Winston begged me to put up the Christmas village on November 8th, I said, “you know what? That would be lovely. Why don’t we put up just one part today, and then save the other parts for other days?”
Starting the decorations a little earlier has allowed us to slow down and to savor each step, taking in the beauty of one of our favorite parts of the season and not losing our minds as we do.
What choices can you make now that will help you slow down and enjoy the rest of the season at a more manageable pace? Packing less into your schedule and finding other options for decorations and gifts is a good place to start.
4. Ask for God’s help:
Seek guidance from God in prayer. Ask for wisdom in how to manage your limitations and make room for His work in your life. Trust that God can bring about something beautiful even in your constraints.
The same year of the Shutterfly explosion, I was really convicted that I needed to spend more time building relationships with those in our community who are poor and marginalized. I wanted to find ways to meet these people, but I often felt so limited by being a Mom of two very needy young children. How could I find the time and energy? And how could I be present to these people when my kids were so demanding of my attention?
One day, I simply surrendered my limits to God, confessing that I didn’t know how to build relationships with marginalized people in my community in the midst of my family’s limitations. I simply asked, “how will this be?” and asked him to show me how.
A few weeks later, we had the opportunity to deliver Thanksgiving baskets to families in need with our church. One of the families we met was a man named Rich and his son, Milo. They let us into their small apartment and the boys played together with Milo’s toys while Rich, my husband, and I talked. Rich told me that he liked to take Milo to Busy Bodies Bounce House every once in a while - a large facility packed with bounce houses.
The next day I thought, “I’d really like to keep fostering this relationship with Rich and his son,” and it occurred to me, “what if we just met at Busy Bodies?” So on a whim, I called Rich up and asked if he and Milo would like to join us. They said they would love to! While our own busy bodies were busy jumping on inflatables, we had a great conversation with Rich that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Because God had made a way in the midst of my limitations, I had the honor of walking with Rich through some of the most difficult days of his life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In those sacred and critical days before his death, I met with Rich in the hospital multiple times.
We were given permission to take his hospital bed outside and had an ice cream party out in the hospital parking lot. I got to meet his family and share some of the most beautiful moments with him before he died. Those are moments I will never forget. They were infused with God’s presence - not because I pushed past my limits to make them happen, but because God came to dwell in the midst of them.
When you consider the call God has on your life, where do you feel your limits most severely? Where do you feel like you don’t have enough? Not enough time? Not enough resources? Not enough energy or vision or gifts?
Could those be the very places that God wants to dwell with you and create something new? Could He take those limits and do something miraculous?
What might happen if you simply asked Him to help you and to make a way where it seems there is no way? In my experience, God LOVES to answer those kinds of prayers.
5. Listen to your body.
Remember that God chose to enter our world through the limits of a human body. Often, when I push past the limits of my body to try to meet expectations, I think I need to overcome my limits and become super-human. Ironically, when I do this, I end up living less human. I become a machine that functions and accomplishes things, but is void of a soul. A mindless, driven beast lacking presence. Instead of looking deep into the eyes of my little ones to truly see them, I see past them to things, projects, and tasks. I cease the ability to see the eternal qualities of God dancing within their eyes as the breathtaking imago dei. I miss the wonder of the present moment.
What might happen if, instead of trying to bust out of the limits of our bodies, we chose to inhabit and embrace them the way Jesus did?
What might it look like to rest when your body is telling you to rest?
Or take a deep breath when you feel overwhelmed?
What would it look like to say, “enough is enough,” and leave the dishes unwashed, the laundry un-folded, and the project incomplete - at least until morning?
Maybe you try paying more attention to your body through things like breath prayers, focusing on one of your five senses, or taking a walk.
Sometimes it helps to have a tool or a guide to lead you into the presence of Jesus because we are often so distracted this time of year. If you would find that helpful, I created a couple prayer resources for you below.
My prayer for you this season, is that you can find ways to embrace your limits. That you will surrender them to God as an invitation, and as you do, that you will discover God dwelling with you in the flesh.
