Expectation Management for Advent by Georgie Tennant

My friend and I have coined a term which is helping us to navigate the ups and downs of family life – Expectation Management. We remind each other of it frequently, particularly at times when our expectations are in danger of running away with us.  We look forward to special days, birthdays, Christmases and holidays – but it is dawning on us both that Expectation Management is essential for these times.

The trouble is that we our victims of our own high expectations, as we envisage the most wonderful of days, our Mary Poppins-like selves, swirling and singing amongst our children, offering them home-baked wares and fun without ceasing.  They, in turn, will listen to every sweet-sounding word we utter, offer their siblings first choice in all things and skip home, to head straight to bed with no need for toe-nail cutting, three extra drinks, five snacks and seven stories.  Reality, as you can well imagine, never matches up – not even nearly.

I am a gold-medal winning high-expectations perfectionist and this can lead to crushing disappointments. It has taken a lot of practice to carve out a new mind-set, one which embraces the struggles and imperfections and allows myself joy in the midst of them. 

So, with my new found “joy-in-the-imperfections’ approach, I entered this Advent with care.  What is it about this season, above all others, that causes us to strive for unattainable perfection?  Since losing my baby at twenty-five weeks of pregnancy, ten years ago, Christmas has always been a bit of an arch-nemesis, one which can be defeated for a time, but always comes back.  My memories of holding my baby, silent in my arms, are incongruent with the smiling perfection of this season that will insist arriving, year on year.

Celebrating Advent, instead of just Christmas, has helped me immeasurably to find the peace that Jesus came to bring, instead of crashing and burning in a heap of traumatic memories and unfulfilled hopes.  It is an approach I would heartily recommend.  Imagine my delight this year, then, when I found out that not one but two ACW Members had published Advent books. 

Coin tossed, and certain that I would never keep up with both, I bought Lucy’s, embarking on it with gusto, smugly telling myself that it would mean I already had an excellent resource lined up for next year.  December had barely taken off and I spotted, on Twitter, that BRF were giving a few copies of Amy’s book away.  I couldn’t resist. 

 

So, here has begun my new Advent tradition of reading one reflection in the morning and one at night.  Throw in the Christmas Promise Advent Calendar and book to do with the children and an Advent candle to light each day, and I’d set myself quite the Advent challenge.

But approaching it all with my new mind-set is helping.  On some of the days, we are too tired and stretched for time to work through the booklet with the children.  On other days, we are around, but the children have argued over which seat they want to sit in or whose turn it is to light the candle, and it all feels like it's jarring too much with the real spirit of it all to bother.  When there are moments of insight, inspiration and spiritual togetherness, I breathe in deeply and store them in my soul, to see me through the days they don’t happen.

Likewise with my own reading. Some days I have stolen a tranquil half an hour, while the rest of the house sleeps.  Others I catch up with two days’ worth on the loo, because it’s the only place I can hide where no-one will ask me to find their swimming trunks or help with their spellings when I have literally just sat down. I am embracing all methods, dragging myself through advent with realistic amounts of cheer, instead of buying the lie that it has to be perfect.

Amy and Lucy are great companions for the journey.  Their books and approaches are so incredibly different, that there is no danger of them overlapping or repeating each other’s’ material.  I have found Amy’s “Image of the Invisible,” an inspiring way to start the day.  There is so much about God contained within it, I am almost expecting the voice of God Himself to boom audibly out through the pages, as cherubim bring it to me with my morning cup of tea.  I love it for its thought-provoking portrayal of God from every possible angle.  I love it too because it’s – well – not too Christmassy!  That might be a strange thing to say about an Advent Book but, for someone who has historically found too much of Christmas triggering, it has been wonderfully refreshing.

Lucy’s “Redeeming Advent,” entirely different in tone, makes me feel as if I am having a sympathetic cup of tea, at the end of a stressful, busy day, with someone who entirely gets it. “It” being the imperfections I described above.  Lucy’s IS Christmassy (I don’t hold that against her!) but what she really really understands is how fraught the run up to Christmas can be and just how much pressure we put on ourselves to deliver the “perfect experience” to our families.  Her empathetic writing releases the grateful reader from these unrealistic expectations, with humour and warmth, as she weaves together personal stories with biblical passages, insights and prayers.

So thank you, Amy and Lucy!  Thank you for leading me through Advent with such wisdom and warmth.  Though it does leave me with one problem I need you all to solve for me…what on earth am I going to read during Advent next year?!

Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 11 and 8 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone: A festive feast of stories, poems and reflections.’ She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk