The Gift You Can't Buy

Picture it.  We just got done at an hour long session of Kicks for Kids (a soccer program) at the local YMCA.  We are hungry, tired.  We stop at Burger King for something quick.  Madison spills her BBQ sauce, starts screaming at the top of her lungs, moaning that we might as well just throw her dinner out the window for God's sake (those were her EXACT words).  We have to giggle, which only infuriates this overtired 5-year-old even more.  It is mass chaos all confined in a Mitsubishi Lancer.  Ironically enough, it is this very family that I had decided was more important and precious to me than working a seasonal job.

For the past several years I have worked during the Christmas season in order to make extra spending cash for the holidays.  It meant 16 hours days sometimes and many nights away from home, but Christmas morning the tree was always surrounded in mounds of gifts.  It was always what I had grown up with...my Dad worked 80 hour weeks and we were spoiled rotten every Christmas.  Christmases are some of my fondest childhood memories.  My parents bent over backwards to make it the most wonderful time of the year. 

My dad now has cancer, a cancer that we suspect is a result of the exposure to chemicals in his workplace over twenty some years.  He now looks back in regrets to working all that time for material things.  Yet here I am repeating the same mistake year after year. 

I loved my seasonal job last year.  It was at the mall, with all the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping.  Christmas music playing in the background, awesome co-workers, simple work.  I actually got excited when I got my paperwork in the mail and it was part of my holiday excitement. 

I don't know what happened today but I had a mini panic attack over starting a second job.  Maybe it's the fact that I always feel tired.  Or the fact that my house looks like a tornado blew threw it.  Or the fact that my kids are growing up before my very eyes and time with them is priceless.  If I have learned anything over the past year it's that life is fragile and fleeting.  You never know when you will lose someone you love or even when your last breath will be.  No one should live as if tomorrow is guaranteed.  I am not suggesting we quit our jobs to pursue our buckets lists, but I am saying make enough to pay your bills and live life with clothes on your back but other than that ENJOY LIFE. 

I talked to a few close people to get their perspective on it all.  Of course, I cried after getting off the phone with my dad.  In retrospect, I would give up all the material things to have spent more time appreciating moments together.  I really just needed him to cement those emotions for me and reinforce the decision my heart had already made. 

So I sat down tonight, made my lists and checked it twice.  I budgeted everything out and I can do this.  I cut back on a few material things.  I will be clipping coupons and sale shopping everything but I am going to bake cookies, drive around to look at lights, go for a ride on the Polar Express, watch every single Christmas show on TV and just soak up every moment of the holidays with my family.  Maybe there won't be flowing heaps under the tree, but there will be gifts for everyone and there will be love and laughter and memories. 

Last but not least, I need to stop biting off more than I can chew.  I work full time, I am raising two girls, I have a husband, a home and a body that requires exercise and rest.  I am making myself a priorty again.  That is a gift that you just can not buy!