While I hope this letter before Christmas finds you well, you should know that it finds me with a backed-up kitchen sink and dirty dishwater leaking all over my kitchen floor.
Rather than making caramels or polishing up the bathroom for company, we are instead tending to the fix-it list that comes along with the purchase of an (old) home, taping pipes and blowing out lines for the fourth times this season — hoping this time the fix will hold and I can finally get to the stack of dishes sitting on the counter.
And so it goes. We will most certainly end this year, and begin the next, imperfectly. Again.
Within my own small circle, there are people I love heading into holidays with thin bank accounts, uncertain employment, health issues, deeply grieving hearts, family turmoil, and the shadow of loss at their table.
I am finishing the season without having purchased perfect gifts for those I love. My table is currently littered with DND literature, which is hardly the perfect holiday tablescape I had in mind. Heirloom ornaments have been broken, attitudes have grown sharp, and even my planner (which gives me some semblance of organization) has been drowned and subsequently mummified in a spilled cup of hot-chocolate.
If you’re coming to the year’s end with fatigue in your bones and dirty corners in your home, you’re normal. And this letter is for you.
What if there’s nothing wrong with the way you and I are ending this year — unfinished, tangled, and imperfect?
Let me put your heart at rest, dear reader. There is nothing wrong with ending the year imperfectly. There is no trophy waiting for you at the end of the year for a polished calendar, perfectly obedient children, and balanced bank account. So take a deep breath and linger in your flannel pajamas a bit longer than normal. Perhaps you can find time to sit by the fire and read, or sip some hot chocolate while listening to a favorite album.
Time off our normal schedule can often beg us to fill it with progress and projects, tempting us with achievement in the small pockets of time that exist in between. I know how strong that siren-song can ring. How easily we cheerlead ourselves on, applauding the order and tidiness we bring with our effort.
But friend, when do we rest? When do we train our eyes to see life’s goodness?
I’ll confess what’s got me asking these questions: reading. No-screen-November turned me in a voracious reader and the days hardly hold enough hours now to satiate my appetite for all I’m devouring.
Reading is where my well-meaning, multi-tasking heart has been laid down at the altar of “productivity”. After all, one cannot work through Great Expectations and mop at the same time.
But if my life is messy, wouldn’t it be better for me to spend the time I’ve spent reading attempting to make life orderly instead?
No. Not necessarily. It is time well-spent to linger in literature that enriches the soul and challenges the mind, to stare into a fire and get lost in thought, to sip tea, to play music, to walk without counting steps or to simply sit still. While these may not achieve outwardly order in the home, ultimately, such moments of rest and delight order the soul.
In such rest, our souls are fed, nurtured, and given-leave of the daily challenges. They are given a moment to exhale, to reflect, perhaps (even for a moment) to escape. We emerge with renewed clarity, joy, and purpose. Our hearts are fed.
Rest and order are not enemies after all.
Is another year of life valuable, even if it finishes imperfectly?
Let me answer that for you: a thousand times, yes.
Love,
Shaye
PS: In the time it took me to write you this letter, Stuart has drained the sink and order is restored to the cottage kitchen. All shall be well. Merry Christmas!
