For the last three years, I have been making beef bourguignon for Christmas dinner.

I don’t recall what caused me to make this decision originally, but the end result was enough of a hit that my son-in-law, Adam, deemed the offering as our new official Christmas meal .

A tradition was birthed although Carl’s garlic mashed potatoes enhanced the deliciousness.

The trick to making this dish is understanding the number of steps and cooking time from start to finish. Year one was a very relaxed affair. I moseyed into the kitchen and despite my constant re-reading of the recipe to assure staying on track, we ate at a reasonable dinner hour.

Year two happened to land about 6 weeks after losing my dad and when reflecting, I don’t remember a lot about Christmas 2020.  But I do remember we ate dinner around 7 pm. What worked perfectly for the inaugural year didn’t seem to materialize the second year. We were all limping along and thankfully, a tardy dinner barely registered to anyone around the table, the only consistency was a chorus of satisfied and contented murmurs.

We may be experiencing the deepest layers of decision fatigue of our entire lives.

I am learning if at all possible, to keep life simple and reduce the number of decisions.

Enter year three of our now standard Christmas beef bourguignon.

I can only speak for myself but believe there may be some resonance.

This period of prolonged crisis, uncertainty, loss, sorrow on a personal, local and global scale has heightened my tendency to become easily overwhelmed or at times, what I would describe as spinning out. 

In the week leading up to Christmas, there was the usual uptick of activities. But this year, there was also the threat of weather (creating the possibility of two family members being absent) along with some other factors that caused me to doubt my ability to be able to accomplish everything.

A few days before Christmas, I sat in the living room with Carl and Caleb and we tried to come up with a strategy for Christmas dinner. I will spare you the details but I could not decide whether to cook on Christmas Eve due to the threat of weather or stay with the usual plan of cooking on Christmas day. We batted each option back and forth as if we were volleying at the tennis net. They were calm, I was getting increasingly overwhelmed and felt incapable of making a decision. After what felt like fruitless time, we decided it made sense to cook on Christmas Eve.

Despite making this decision, I continued to think about it the next day. 

I didn’t feel completely settled in this course of action.

I asked myself these two questions:

“What do I want?” and “What do I need?”

I wanted my family of six to eat Christmas dinner together.

I wanted to enjoy Christmas Eve because we have many long-standing traditions that are among my favorites. 

I wanted to sleep in on Christmas morning because we stay up late on Christmas Eve.

I needed (and wanted) to be present.

I needed to not put so much pressure on myself to make Christmas perfect.

I needed to remember, I don’t control the weather.

I needed to leave tomorrow where it resides.

Once each need and want was realized, my breath softened as did my shoulders.

My plan changed to cooking on Christmas and to fully enjoy both the Eve and the Day.

I would arise at 8 am, not 6 am to begin cooking before our Christmas brunch and tree time at 11 am. 

The day went like clockwork, as they say. I could not have drawn up a better plan had I spent time thinking about it. wink wink

We ate at the time we hoped and the weather held off until the next day. 

However, if we had eaten at 8 pm or the arctic winds blew snow and ice in our direction earlier, we would have pivoted. We would have survived.

At this point, with all that we have traversed over these last years, I would have expected to have learned this lesson. I feel a bit silly writing about such a trivial scenario. Yet the reality is that in the midst of this particular scene every part of it felt unanswerable and all-consuming.

It is possible that all the necessary pivoting can feel like landing back to square one. 

Maybe when I try to gather a sense of control within the most mundane parts of life and fall flat on my face, it creates a greater sense of feeling overwhelmed. 

I am trying to ask myself those two questions during moments when I feel prone to a spinning mind or with newfound frustrations. 

Sometimes what I want is simply to speak out loud about what is bothering me or giving me internal fits.

Sometimes what I need is as simple as a nap, a drink of water, time outside, a walk, a conversation, or a snack. 

Sometimes I need to ask for help, divvy up or shuffle responsibilities. 

Most times, it helps to stop, be still and breathe.

What do you want?

What do you need?

Daily life can be a bit like making a French dish, it is important to know the ingredients, steps and correct amount of simmering time.

May we take time to ponder our needs and wants in the midst of living in the land of uncertainty and questions.

May we hear the answers to our questions as a gentle whisper in our ears and experience it as a balm for our souls. 

When we think holding the steering wheel tighter will stop our life from spinning out of control, may we gently give our loss of center back over to the One who graciously keeps the world spinning on its axis.