Episode 67: You Can Be Okay During the Holiday & Still Stay in Truth

Hey there, welcome back to the choose and podcast. I'm your host, Roxanne Grenada. And it is almost Christmas, just a few days away, and Christmas will be here. So where have you been at mentally and emotionally? How have you been feeling? Have you been able to get the things done that you needed to? and been able to keep your self in a sense of peace, less anxiety? Or have you been running like crazy and just hoping that everything gets done and feeling like counting the days basically like, when is this going to be over? Okay, we have five more days, okay, we have this many more days and just waiting for it to be over.

Wherever you're at whatever has happened in the last couple of weeks, as you've been preparing for Christmas, I want you to just take a breath for a second, I want you to just sit back, I want you to close your eyes, I want you to breathe in through your nose, and then breathe out through your mouth, I want you to do that a couple more times. And as you're breathing, and closing your eyes, I want you to rest your shoulders down like like lift them up, push them back, and then let them drop and just shake them out a little shake out your hands.

And I just want you to like just breathe for a minute. I want you to bring yourself back down to it ever things are going on. And so that we can talk about how to take in this holiday with presence with peace with understanding with awareness with truth. Because what I don't want you to do is try to get through the holiday and pretend that either things aren't happening that are or waiting to get through the holiday so that you can take some action or make decisions.

I'm not saying that you need to make a decision today if something if you need to make a big huge change. But I am wanting you to stay in the truth of your personal reality. So that when the holiday does end, you aren't stepping back into it like oh yeah, what was my reality again, or the feeling of having a crash and burn where there's this hype for the holiday expectations are not met, and then we crash and burn and then we're ready to take some action. So even if you're not going to take any action, I still want you to look at the situation, observe it in a very present way like like, what what am I in what's going on?

What's the situation in my family right now, I'm talking about this, it might not even pertain to you. But if you are in a heart relationship right now, if you are separated, if you are on the path to divorce, even if you're on the path to reconciliation, but you have been separated or or there has been trauma or infidelity in the past. And so there's still this uncertain future. This is really for you to stay in that awareness place so that you don't go on the roller coaster of I'm going to pretend all as well for the holiday so that everybody's okay.

And then afterwards, I'm going to crash and burn. I don't want you to do that. So you can have a good holiday without making any big decisions, and also stay in the truth. So kind of like being the observer like we've talked about, I want you to stay neutral. I want you to take the good things and absorb them, take them in. I don't want you looking at it with a skeptical eye. Let's just say you are in a relationship where you're unsure if you're going to make it with your partner. I don't want you to look at everything he does or she does with this judgment eye of why is he doing this what's going on? He's being nice right now.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop. We can step back and be like okay, I not sure if what he's doing is going to last but right now it feels good. I like being treated this way. And I love that he came into the kitchen and helped me with things. I really appreciated that my children helped me wrapped, wrapped presents or that my spouse was aware that life is stressful and they came and asked me what they could do tell me or they rub my shoulders for a minute, something that would show that they're aware of you. I want you to still take that in.

I want you to be able to receive it and not have a wall up around it, but I don't want you to jump on the roller coaster with it. So I don't want you to grab that and say, Oh good. Oh good. Oh, good. Everything's okay, no, okay, oh, I'm so grateful. So happy, it's a Christmas miracle, and then only to crash and burn after the fact if it isn't, in fact, something that is going to keep happening. So by staying neutral, we can take it in as it is, we can be grateful that it happened, and be in the place of, and I'm also going to watch and see if this sort of behavior keeps happening.

I want to know that I'll be respected on a regular basis, I want to know that my spouse wants to help me on the daily. I want to be part of a team where we are navigating parenting, or work or relationships or the house together, where we are both supporting one another. That's what I'm wanting you to watch for. So when we stay neutral, we can do that. The other thing for the holidays is it gets really stressful at times, money, sometimes it's tight, yet we want to do fun things, I challenge you to do some fun things anyway. Not overly do if you can't, but choose some fun things you can do maybe that don't cost a lot of money.

If that is something like go look at light somewhere, drive around, or read some Christmas stories together and have hot chocolate. That's a tradition I used to do growing up every Sunday, the month of December will start in the last week of November, we my dad would or my mom would read A Christmas Story on that Sunday night, and we'd have hot chocolate. And we just did that every week. And we had our mugs, and it was just fun. So that's something that doesn't necessarily cost a lot of money. But creating those kinds of experiences will help you feel good about what is going on. Now I know Christmas is almost here.

So you can't start a tradition of every Sunday, but you could do it once. If that is not possible. I want you to do things for yourself. If you are not in a situation where either you have a spouse, or maybe you have already been divorced, and your kids are going to be with the other parent, and you're going to be by yourself. What can you do to create a day or an evening that would be celebrating you and what you love in your life or your relationship with Jesus Christ or with God and create something that might not be the same.

And you may feel resentment that you don't have your kids and I'm sure there'll be sadness, please feel all the sadness. And at the same time, fill it with things that will also bring you comfort, peace, joy, or, or any of those things. Maybe you just need to wrap up in a blanket and have your favorite drink or your favorite dessert and watch a movie together with if you do have your kids, if you're by yourself, maybe you need to do that by yourself. Maybe you need to go on a drive. Maybe you need to listen to Christmas music. Maybe that brings you trauma. So you don't want to do that. That's okay to find something though, that makes sense for you.

So that whatever the situation is this year, if it is something that's hard, will be somewhat like okay, I made that event I made the day nice for me, even though I felt pain. This is never to erase the pain and never to pretend that the pain isn't there. We actually want to feel it all. feeling sadness is important because it is sad. And separating for holidays or divorce is probably the hardest thing for me about being divorced, that my kids are not with me for every holiday. I hate that part. That's the worst part. But it does get better. It does become something that's okay eventually.

This last Thanksgiving, I noticed that it was the first holiday since the divorce, which was back in 2015. So a long time ago that I felt normal again, like truly normal. Like it was so enjoyable. I didn't feel any trauma. I didn't feel any emptiness. My kids were with me this time. But they've been with me in the past a lot. So I I was surprised at how all of a sudden, it was if things were making sense. I was feeling comfortable and grounded in my own experience my own life. You know, different than everybody else in my family at this point with divorces and things like that, but I felt so good.

I felt like I had in the past when I used to have these holidays before my life changed and became a new life. Right? And I'm telling you that because if this holiday for you is one that is filled with emptiness or loneliness, or uncertainty or like you're in a fog or you don't know your place, it does get better as you keep doing the work. As you keep healing emotionally and mentally and psychologically and spiritually, everything does come together to where you create your new way of doing it, or the new thought process in it, and it feels so good.

So I want to give you hope that it does happen. And sometimes it doesn't, it takes a while. For me, it took this many years to feel like Thanksgiving was normal again. But it did come. And it did feel great. And I wanted to celebrate that fact, that felt good. So for you guys this Christmas, what do you need to do for you to feel okay? What can you do in these next few days before Christmas comes, that adds peace and relief to your life, to your soul to your heart.

So think about that it's going to be different for everybody. But I do want you to do something like that. As Christmas ends, and you may feel relief that it's over, or you may feel sad that it's over, I want you to sit with those feelings as well. Remember to stay present with your feelings and thoughts because that's where we can overcome. If we don't feel the sadness or pain, and we just decide to I don't know, push it down, then it still will come up, eventually, it will still will bubble up. And so there's no better time than the present to just deal with our thoughts and feelings.

For some reason, we have a belief, well, maybe not everybody I know I did that the holidays needed to be a certain way. I needed to create an environment of fun and laughter and love and peace and giving and, and all the things for it to be okay. Like almost like, I can't be truthful, I can't say what's actually going on, I can't let everybody know that my marriage is in trouble, I have to put on a smiling face. So that everybody has a good time as if, as if being human and not having a good time would somehow disrupt the universe. And that's, that is a false belief. So if you have that perfectionistic belief around holidays, that you are in charge of making sure everything is perfect and fine. I'm just gonna ask you to challenge that.

If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling upset, if you need to hold a boundary over Christmas, you have every right to do it, it doesn't matter if it's Christmas, you haven't ruined everybody, because you hold the boundary, if you have to do something seriously crazy, and you have to either leave your house, or you have to tell somebody else they have to leave your house, a family member, a spouse, whatever, you can do it, because this is all about taking care of you taking care of the family as a whole. And sometimes that means hard things.

We don't need to save anybody from the feelings or the thoughts they experience. Let's just live in the truth. And then everybody will get to feel it and learn what they need to do in order to overcome. So this Christmas may look different for you than it has in the past it you already may know that maybe your kids are already gone for us. We don't have any kids at home this year. My kids will all be with their dad's family and my stepkids will be with our mom's family. So we've decided we didn't want to be here by ourselves.

We have done that two years ago, we did that. But we decided you know what, we're gonna just gonna celebrate different this time. And we're going to go on a road trip. And so we're just going to be gone for a few days doing some fun things and just spending time together and celebrating the holiday different than we have ever in the past, but creating a new memory. So we don't need to get locked in to what an old memory is, or an old belief system, the way it should look, we can actually create something different that feels good to us.

And that helps us build our relationship since we're still new in the relationship, this will be our third Christmas together. So as as you keep spending these days, please take care of you know that you are loved, know that you are watched over that God definitely knows your circumstance and he is with you. And He will help you through whatever it is you need to do. Try to challenge yourself to stay in the truth and to call things out when you need to stay peaceful as well and take care of you that way. If you need to take time for yourself. If you need to step away from family events. That's okay. You are totally allowed to do that.

If you decide you can't be at a family event, again, you're totally okay to do that. Even if it upsets people. Because what we're learning is we're not in charge of other people's thoughts, feelings and emotion and we're gonna allow them to take care of themselves. We're gonna allow them to deal with their thoughts, feelings and emotions just as we deal with our own on a regular basis. So Merry Christmas to you guys. I love you guys. I'm so glad that you come each week to learn and grow and take care of you. I'm happy To build alongside you in this journey of healing I wish you well and we will we will start out the New Year bold and strong and ready to take action so have a good week and I will see you next time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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