Creating COZY
An invitation to reflect
Dear Church,
It’s a head-scratcher for me as to why we cram SO MUCH into the holiday season. It seems like the starter pistol fires after the busy-ness of Thanksgiving, and we are off to the races.
Several years ago, we made the foolish decision to try to visit family after Christmas. We were still living in California at the time, so we did all the things we do at home—the parties, the functions, the drives, the holiday concerts, the Nutcracker. Cindy and I were working together at Church, so we powered through the busy Christmas Eve expectations. We came home and hosted a small gathering, stayed up late assembling things under the tree, and did Christmas morning at home with our team of four. Later that evening, we boarded a plane bound for San Antonio, which arrived at midnight. We took the shuttle to grab the rental car to find that there were no rental cars, despite the reservation (cue Seinfeld), took a taxi to her mom’s place with drowsy kiddos and crammed the four of us into her mom’s guestroom. Of course, I woke up the next morning on an air mattress with a fever, utterly spent. Laying there, I thought, “this is crazy? Why do we do this to ourselves?”
We don’t have to, right? I mean, we feel like we have to, but we don’t have to.
I WONDER (there’s an Advent word for us.) I wonder what would happen if we didn’t. If we missed some parties. If we didn’t cram our calendars with multiple nights out and about. I WONDER what would happen if we worked on creating (even just for a few weeks) some practices that would make us more comfortable, more COZY during this run up to Christmas. What if we added things like warmth, comfort, rest, time, and space into our calendars, rather than the expectations of increased productivity. What if we used winter’s cold and waning sunlight to our COZY advantage, rather than resisting something that comes around every year.
Let’s create some COZY together this Advent. If you want to talk about it, let’s do that on Wednesday evenings for a few weeks beginning on December 6 at 6:30 p.m. We’ll have the fire going and the soup and bread warm and the sleepytime tea ready for brewing. Come in your PJs if you want!
Love,
Jimmy
