Christmas Shopping—Bah, Humbug!

By Kathi Macias

I am not a shopper. Seriously! Shopping—particularly Christmas shopping—is right up there at the top of my “despised things to do” list, right along with root canals and skydiving. (Okay, I’ve never actually experienced skydiving, but I promise you I’d hate it. I mean, you don’t have to get set on fire to know you don’t want to be a human torch, am I right?)

The worst thing about shopping is that you really can’t get out of it. When I was a kid, Mom used to drag me and my two younger brothers along on the bus just so we could trudge up and down Main Street and plod in and out of every store along the way. (That was before shopping malls, if you can imagine that!) My feet would hurt, I was mad because I wanted to be home reading a book, and worst of all I had to “keep an eye on” my two little brothers. Oh, that was fun! While Mom pawed through piles of sweaters and socks and underwear—none of which we kids had the least interest in receiving as gifts—I halfheartedly tried to keep my brothers from getting into trouble. They, on the other hand, were completely devoted to finding some new and innovative way of disrupting the entire shopping event. Of course, as I stood there bemoaning my fate and feeling absolutely wretched over the entire state of affairs, it never occurred to me that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for my mom; somehow I was under the illusion that she actually enjoyed it!

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“Baby Steps”

By Kathi Macias

“What About Bob?” has to be one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I’ve laughed my way through it many times, which is highly unusual for me, as it’s a rare film that holds my interest more than once. I’ve asked myself what it is about that movie that intrigues me—beyond the obvious, which is that it’s a story about an over-the-edge neurotic who carries his goldfish in a water pouch around his neck and endears himself to his therapist’s family through his eccentric but winsome ways, even as he infuriates the therapist himself and eventually drives him over the edge. As humorous as that is, the most memorable part of the movie is a simple two-word phrase: “baby steps.”

When Bob learns his therapist is going on vacation and won’t be able to see him for a while, the poor man is panic-stricken. He informs the doctor that he simply cannot function that long without him, so the therapist advises him not to be overwhelmed by the situation but to approach it with “baby steps.” We then see Bob proceeding through the movie, reminding himself at every juncture: “Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps….”

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Thanksgiving…Again?

By Kathi Macias

Didn’t we just do Thanksgiving? It couldn’t possibly have been a year since the last one because I promised myself I was going to lose those extra turkey-and-mashed-potatoes pounds but…I haven’t! How can that be?

Seriously, when I was young I could lose ten pounds by skipping lunch for a few days. Now? Turkeys follow me around laughing. They know they’re not the only ones who are going to pay the price for this calorie-laden holiday.

I remember Thanksgiving when we were kids, when my mom started baking on Monday for Thursday’s feast. She was so busy preparing for the big day that she forgot we still had to eat until then. Between Sunday and Thursday of Thanksgiving week, we survived on dry cereal and cold hot dogs.

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The 12 Days of Christmas

By Kathi Macias –

I love Christmas. In addition to the wonderful celebration of Christ’s birth on earth, I love the feel of Christmas, the sounds of it, the smells of it—and above all, the tastes of it.

And that’s the problem. As much as I love Christmas, I also fear it. It’s a sort of love-hate relationship, as I wrestle with sugarplums dancing in my head (though I haven’t a clue what sugarplums are!) and calories not just dancing but taking up permanent residence on my mid-section.

Seriously, I go into the infamous twelve-days-of-Christmas season (which really lasts the entire month of December and beyond for me) each year determined not to overeat. I never last beyond the middle of the month because that’s when the need to bake takes over.

“Aren’t you going to make sugar cookies with sprinkles for the guys at work?” my husband asks.

I love sugar cookies with sprinkles—and it’s for the guys at work! How can I say no? The first day of Christmas has officially arrived.

No sooner do I finish those cookies than my husband says, “It would really be great if you could add some walnut brownies to the plate—you know, for the guys at work.”

Yeah, I know. Those poor guys must be starved. One Texas-sized batch of brownies, coming up! And day two of Christmas is under way.

Day three, and I’m determined to eat salad—a spritz of lemon juice in place of dressing. (After all, I had to taste those sugar cookies and brownies to make sure they were okay before I sent them to the guys at work, right? Now I have to make up for it.) But then I see the note on the bulletin board at the clubhouse where we live, asking for donations of pound cake for the annual delivery to the nursing home. How selfish can I be? Some of those elderly residents might not get cake except once a year at Christmas! Who am I to deprive them? (On the plus side, I was so full from sampling pound cake and licking the bowl and beaters at the end of the day that I skipped the salad entirely.)

The fourth day of Christmas requires peanut butter cookies for a neighbor, while day five entails pumpkin pies. The sixth day—halfway there!—has me trying my hand at apple strudel (one of my favorites, so I make two—one for me and one for everyone else). The fudge on day seven nearly sends me over the sugar edge, so I tone it down a bit and make bread on day eight (which, of course, must be eaten warm with lots of butter). By day nine I try making a jelly roll. If the first one turns out crooked, I just eat it and make another one. (Practice makes perfect!)

Who am I making all these treats for, you might ask? The guys at work? The nursing home residents? Absolutely not! They got their goodies, and I blame them for getting me started on this baking frenzy anyway. I’m now going to all this effort just to fill the freezer “in case company drops by.” And in all honesty, we have grandkids who can eat everything in that overloaded freezer in one sitting, so my reasoning isn’t completely faulty.

I devote days ten and eleven to various kinds of candy, all of which are delicious, but by day twelve I draw the line. “No more baking,” I declare. “No cookies, candies, pies, or cakes. I’m done.”

At that point last year, my husband smiled. “That’s great. You deserve a day off. And here, I got you something special while I was in town yesterday.” Tears popped into my eyes as he laid the three-pound box of chocolates on my lap (a lap which was considerably larger than it had been before the onset of the twelve days of Christmas), and he was touched at my emotional reaction.

“Wow,” he said. “I knew you liked candy, but I didn’t expect you to be so happy you’d cry about it.”

Indeed. Once again Christmas had moved me to tears. The next move would have to be to the gym to work off the effects of all that baking. But I’d learned to survive the twelve days of Christmas, and I suppose I’ll do the same this year.

Have a blessed Christmas, dear friends!

Will the Real Superwoman Please Stand Up?

By Kathi Macias –

I’ve always been a control freak who wanted everything to run smoothly—perfectly, actually. No bumps or surprises, just—well, a “tight ship,” as they say. And somewhere along the line I got the idea that I could make that happen—if I just tried hard enough. I think it may have started when I first saw Superman on our family’s black and white TV and wondered, Is there a Superwoman somewhere? When I put that question to the adults in my life, theysmiled and patted me on the head and said, “I don’t think so, dear.” So I decided to sign up for the job—a reasonable if somewhat naïve aspiration for a six-year-old, not so reasonable and way beyond naïve at twenty-six. Two decades after the birth of my Superwoman dream, I was still running as fast as I could and getting nowhere. My twenty-year-old dream was going down for the count, and I was nearly at the point of throwing in the towel—until I met Jesus.

What a difference! Now I could latch on to verses like “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and “All things should be done decently and in order”—biblical affirmations of my desire to do things right, to do things efficiently and effectively, to do things with power and authority. Finally I was invincible—in Jesus, of course. Now all I needed was a godly role model and I’d be on my way.

I began my search in earnest, reading through the Scriptures until I came to Proverbs 31.Eureka! There, at last, was the epitome of the Superwoman I’d been hoping to become since I was six years old. The perfect woman—perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect housekeeper, perfect entrepreneur—all rolled into one! Not only did her husband and children praise her, but God must have approved of her as well or He certainly wouldn’t have included her as an example in the Bible. My dream was alive and well once again! At last I would be able to “get it all together,” to win instead of fail, to run a tight ship, and to keep things under control. Life was good, and the future looked bright.

There was only one problem. I hadn’t figured on all the loose cannons rolling around the deck of my not-so-tight ship….

You see, I had a family—meaning, I shared my life with other human beings. Not only were those other humans imperfect (and yes, I was aware that I was imperfect as well), but they didn’t consider me Superwoman at all. It seemed the harder I tried to organize them, the more unruly they became.

After years of trying to get them to march in lock-step, keeping their rooms clean, their clothes hung up, their homework done (I’m including my husband in this line-up!), I achieved nothing except exhaustion. And then one day—finally—I fell to my knees and cried out, “God, I’m tired! I just can’t do all this. It’s not fair! Why do I have to do everything?”

If God chuckles—and I imagine He does—He undoubtedly did so at that moment. In fact, I think I may have heard Him, even as He silently but firmly answered my question: “Nearly everything you are doing is by your own assignment. All I asked you to do was come and sit at My feet. Sadly, you’ve been far too busy for that.”

Talk about a reality check! And so Superwoman hung up her cape, apologized to her family, and reduced her to-do list to one item: Spend time with God. At last I had figured out that if I did that one thing, God would see to it that the rest got done—with or without my help. And as time went on, much like the Proverbs 31 woman’s experience, my husband and children rose up and declared me blessed.

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