First Sunday of Advent: Anxiety

"Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from...the anxieties of daily life."

So that was written in the Gospel of Luke as something said by Christ to his disciples. It's about the end times, about the day that will "assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth." End times talk kind of goes in one of my ears and out the other. But that first sentence got me.

Don't let the anxieties of daily life exhaust you. I should paint that on a canvas and glue it to my face. I am always letting the anxieties of daily life exhaust me. Not the work of daily life, not the parenting and driving and teaching and cleaning and eating and going places of daily life, which are exhausting enough by themselves, but the anxieties.

Am I good enough? Will I manage to achieve my goals? 

Are my kids living up to some vague external standard that I don't care about deep in my heart but feel like maybe I should? Have I become...average...or worse, somewhat below average? Is my house clean enough if a neighbor were to knock on the door? Do I really fit in on this block anymore? Do I need to start over? 

What do I get LisaBillyEliJakobJeff for Christmas? When do I possibly get that done? God what about the girl scout troop trip? 

Did I screw up at work, or rather, how badly did I screw up? Did someone notice? Why can't I get it together? Why did I say that to her?

Why does my knee hurt? Did I call the dentist back? Is Daisy's eye ever going to get better? 

What am I forgetting?

The little internal voice in my head is not my friend. It isn't my conscience. It is just anxiety. I manage to self-talk myself right into paralysis pretty much anytime I start falling behind in any realm of my life. Some of those thoughts, like whether I called the dentist back, are legitimate. But measuring myself against an imaginary yardstick of popular opinion is not healthy for me or anyone near me.

And there is Christ, telling us not to get drowsy from the anxieties of daily life. Don't give a hoot about any of that stuff. Do what I can and leave the rest for tomorrow. Do one thing, do it well, and move on. Go to bed. Don't kill myself trying to measure up. Just be.

Because I find, the dentist and the knee aside, that nobody is really keeping tabs anyway. I tell this to middle school girls all the time: everyone else is so caught up in their own anxieties that they can hardly even register that you're there. No one remembers. No one notices.

Tis the season of tension headaches and sleep deprivation.

But it doesn't have to be.

Do not worry, God says. Do not be afraid. That's what worry is, after all, just fear by another name. Don't be afraid. We weren't made for fear.

Do not worry.

The liturgical year turns over again: New

I found myself thinking about this blog this afternoon as I left church on my way to go pick up my middle daughter, Daisy, from her play practice. I thought, the year turns over at sundown tonight. Liturgical Year 2016 begins and many things are new. I should write about them. I should write here about them, again, new and yet not very new. A thousand years not new.

Sr. Mimi has left, gone to start great things at her motherhouse in Texas, which might as well be a whole other country. Fr. Miguel has been moved, to a suburban parish nearby and yet a thousand miles away. Some parishioners said flat-out that they would follow him. Some surprised me and said of course they would stay--people who followed Miguel to my parish and then found a home in it. Most of us, though, are old-timers now.

I remember when I was new.

So here is Fr. Lucien, new and yet not so new. He's my parents' age and my mother pointed out that she wouldn't be surprised if our parish is the one he retires from--goes from us to some priest-in-residence position some place softer than our south city parish. I think about the bombings in Paris, not about the bombings but about the motto of Paris: Fluctuat nec murgitur. She is tossed by the waves but does not sink. So is my parish. We stay afloat, year after year. But we are not on dry land. I can't imagine being in my 60s and taking the reins of this place.

I made banners for Advent; I will post them later. They are new, and yet closely tied to banners I made years ago. I hope they will suffice. Fr. Lucien liked them. I think I could like him.

But many things are new, intertwined with the sameness of everyday life. Not just at my parish--my oldest is in high school, where everything is new, and I'm there with her in spirit and yet my youngest is still dressing up as a Pokemon to trick or treat. I am a new parent and yet I keep doing the same things. The same things for someone who is new.

It's why I like the liturgical year. We get another chance to make the best Christmas Pageant Ever. We have another Advent. We hear those readings again. We see the lights of the wreath and feel the cold damp air turning over to snow--if we're lucky--and remember that the world turns round, falling in towards the sun, year after year after year.

When my husband's grandmother died, I was pregnant with my second child. We were in Cairo, Illinois, a few weeks after the funeral, to sift through belongings and think about what came next. I walked through Grandma Stout's house with Fiona, who was three years old.

"Why did Grandma Stout die?" she asked. I glanced at my mother-in-law but we both knew who needed to answer that one.

"She was sick, sweetheart, and she was old, and when old people get very sick, they sometimes die."

She nodded, her mind satisfied with that answer. And then she looked up at me and said, "But we're new."

"Yes, we're new."