When I was five years old and still receiving all of the Barbie dolls and Britney Spears CDs that I wrote in my letter to Santa, I didn’t dream that Christmas could ever have the potential to be stressful. When I was in my senior year of high school, receiving a small paycheck every so often from my first part time job and not surrendering money to bills, I never thought finding everyone Christmas presents would pose a challenge. I was eighteen years old and convinced that I had enjoying Christmas and providing my family with awesome gifts down to a science.
Fast forward a few years: twenty years old and going to the Dollar Tree every couple of weeks to keep groceries in the cabinet of my apartment – the same apartment that I’m spending a few hundred dollars on every month to live in. While I have a part-time job that pays a little more than minimum wage, I still find myself struggling to make ends meet. For the first time ever, I found Christmas stressful. I found myself frequently tearing up over the thought of not being able to give my family the gifts I felt they deserve.
I go to school full-time and stay on campus from eight in the morning to about four-thirty. After that, most evenings, I work five to close, ten o’clock in the evening. After I get home from closing, I work on homework until almost one in the morning. Then my day starts all over again. Keeping up with this routine for the first few months made me extremely tired. I was beginning to get a surplus, but I still needed to stay up after closing the store to do all of the homework I had due the next day. I was going, and going, and going, and going all day with very few days for breaks. And when you’re so tired and stressed, you start to throw yourself a pity party and convince yourself you have it so hard. You also start to forget that you have God right there, willing to help you the second you ask. I knew I needed to slow down after the first night I was too tired to do my nightly prayer.
After that night, I felt spiritually deprived, and I started losing control of things because I spread myself too thin. After a week of crying at night – feeling sorry for myself, wondering what’s missing, wishing things were different – I started to pray. I first started by turning everything that I thought was negative into a positive by thanking God for it. “Thank you, God, for giving me a job that pays well and allows me to work as much as I do. I know how hard that is to come around. Thank you, God, for allowing me to study something I’m so passionate about and the challenges that come with it. I know there’s a purpose for all of this work, and I know it will make me a great music teacher one day.”
As I kept going with my prayer, it dawned on me – my family doesn’t care about what kind of gift I give them for the holidays. It may not be much, but the fact that we have each other and that we all share such a strong bond with each other is a gift enough. Of course, I’ll do what I can, but I realized that I shouldn’t worry so much about the material part of the holidays. “Thank you God, for blessing me with such a loving family for me to not only celebrate Christmas with, but to celebrate every day You bless us with and to celebrate it together.”
I know how stressful it is this time of the year. While it’s such an exciting and joyous time, it can be easy to take your focus away from the real meaning of Christmas and worry about what’s on store shelves. Don’t lose sight of all of the little things that happen every single day because you’re stressed over what may or may not be under the tree. This is such a beautiful time of year – thank God for such a beautiful season to celebrate in. Thank God for sending his son to be born and to one day for our sins. Thank God for the excitement and joy in your children’s faces as each day in December passes. You don’t want to lose it to stress.
Olivia Watson
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