"We Must Stop It From Coming, But How"

It’s coming, it’s coming & there is no stopping it.  We simply cannot pause the clocks.

This time of the year, most folks are somewhat frantically running in a zillion directions in preparation for the attainment of the “perfect Norman Rockwell-like” Christmas or perhaps the “perfect” Chanukah.  There is a lot of running though either way, that’s for sure.

We “must stop it from coming, but how?”  That is a hilarious line out of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”  Please don’t get me wrong as I absolutely love Christmas…at least the true spirit of what it means within the heart.  The part that brings the Grinch to mind is both the humour that I really find that I need during  the season & the reminder Seuss-style that keeping the spirit alive & keeping meaning in the season is what is truly important.  It is the “singing” that we can choose to do throughout the season no matter what the season brings.

For folks living with diabetes or other “365” health challenges, family holidays can prove to be an exercise in pushing a 40 million ton ball up a slippery cliff covered in banana peels!  Whether it is Christmas or Thanksgiving or another family holiday season, it is a mammoth job to look after health challenges on top of the preparations for the “perfect” get together.

This will be Christmas number 6 for our family to have type 1 diabetes join us during the festivities.  It is an unwelcome guest & everyone with this or any other 365 health challenge would agree with this. 

Being a realistic optimist, I have come to realize that this year I am going to choose to do more “with” my diabetes than “about” it during the Christmas season.  It is not as if diabetes or health challenges take a vacation just because it is a family holiday.  If only that would happen!  Having 5 years of celebrations though with this diabetes, I have discovered exactly what does not work & you know what, what will work is still a work in progress when it comes to holiday seasons.  What I have learned is that when I do too much running & stressing out & running my energy right down so that adrenaline is the only thing left, that leads to the road of worse blood sugar control.  There are many things that are wonderful in abundance however stress is not one of them.  Every day stress is “normal” & I think that unless a person is a hermit it would be highly improbable to expect to live a stress-free life.  It is the extra super imposed stress that the holidays bring that is “too much”.  Too much of most things is not a good idea. 

Okay, so that brings us to the doing something “about” the holidays as well as the doing something “with” the celebratory time.  The “about “,as I mentioned , I have limited influence over.  These are the choices like simplifying the holidays as much as possible.  Do we really need oodles of salads & extra baking or could it be that a homemade meal with the love stirred in would be tastier?  Could it be that instead of baking up a storm that a couple of specific desserts could be made & enjoyed?  Could it be that during gatherings that I choose to make as many health building choices as possible yet accept that if you are trying someone else’s delicacies that it would be like pinning jello to a tree to “guess” the number of carbs in them.  That is not even to add into the equation that with insulin, you also have the added task of figuring out whether the recipe has a bunch of butter/margarine, which slows the insulin down I find so I have to multi-wave the insulin (ride the surf).  Hmm, what can you do about the collection of calls from well meaning folks stressing out about the last new fad gadget or what not on the shelf at the mall & you need to let them know immediately whether this is something that your third cousin removed living in Alaska would enjoy.  What can you do about other folks around just getting overwhelmed it seems with the nitty gritty details of everything surrounding the holidays.  It can be exhausting…physically & emotionally.  That is the thing…the physical & emotional exhaustion, I took full part in for these past 5 years with diabetes. What can you and I choose to do about some of these things?  Well, we can influence the things that are in our power.  We cannot do too much about what other people do or say or whether they notice that we are getting sicker & sicker with the “too muchness” of the holidays.  We can though have a plan already figured out in advance on what to say yes to & what to say no to & stick with that plan.  I have already decided this year that I will not go to the mall over & over again.  It will be  one trip to find everything.  Previous years, I shopped for too many days, too many hours & found it did not provide a good health result.  Here’s the thing, the folks that love us do not want us to get sicker during the holidays because we have knocked ourselves out to find what we think is the perfect gift for the dozens upon dozens of loved ones.  Our loved ones do not expect us to bake & decorate until we drop & our blood sugars rise higher than that soufflé only to drop later on like the tides coming in.  The other thing is that our loved ones & other folks do not understand the tightrope of blood sugar control that we walk during the holidays.  How could they?  They do love us though & want us to be as well as we can be.  The person who knows us best is ourselves.  We decide when to have a piece of “roulette” cake & when I do, I prepare myself for the insulin correction a few hours later because I cut myself some slack as I am not the Amazing Kreskin & do not know the carbs in someone else’s potluck dish & for a short time during the holidays, that is okay.  And someone else’s frenzy is just that.  Some folks make choices to “freak out” about the little things surrounding the holidays.  That is okay however I choose to refrain from joining in on that particular activity.   For me, I have found that diabetes just plain magnifies all that is truly important in my own life.  It means that I get to choose even more gratitude, humour, kindness & love all year long. 

Now what to do “with” the holidays.  That feels like an easier quest than the doing something “about” part in my mind.  This year, I choose to have a bigger yes about the spirituality of the season so that what is truly important does not become “lost”.  It is about choosing kindness & patience & perspective & simplicity.  It is about keeping dear hearts that have delightful senses of humour close by. It is about keeping spiritual battle buddies in close company.   It is about keeping the wonderful traditions yet taking it all down to a sound that is not “blasting” the charm away.  It is about understanding that as much as they would like to, many of the folks in our lives will not know that our blood sugars are going too high or too low.  It is about giving ourselves the inside hug to say that we will try our best to nurture ourselves.  The best part of the holidays I find is sharing a sense of community.  It is the community that we love within our families.  It is community within our friendships.  It is being united within the places that we live.  In my family, I am the only person with diabetes.  Here’s the part for me that is the biggest community-building piece.  It is this…I get to choose to let the diabetes be a part of building community within my own family.  It means that although I am the only one with this, that I get to choose to do “something with” diabetes by allowing it to magnify the love that I feel for my family & friends. 

May you find your heart’s “about” & “with” in each & every day…during the family holidays & in the simple day to day moments on the other days of the year.

Smiles, Saundie