I might’ve overestimated how much time I’d have.

Also, how many cookies we might need.

I should have guessed this when I stopped by the grocery to pick up my carefully detailed list of ingredients and the small shopping cart I’d chosen to fill turned out to be too small.

Seriously? Who needs a large shopping cart for cookie ingredients?

Apparently, me.

Honestly, it didn’t seem like all that much. Just a few batches.

Okay, maybe four. Possibly five.

Um, nope. Actually, it was half a dozen different recipes. Which still doesn’t sound like much.

But this is me we’re talking about, so … yeah, well, so.

I asked the three men in my household (two sons, one husband) if they wanted to help me bake. The answer came back as a question.

“So, how many are we making?”

I couldn’t lie. “Well, it’s me … so…”

I could only get one volunteer. To his credit, he did stay for two of the recipes before petering out.

That can happen when you try to deck too many halls.

Or make too many cookies.

It’s easy to over-do when you’re in the holiday spirit and carols are being sung everywhere and there’s holly and ivy and joy to the world seems like it might even be possible. Well, if you squint.

It’s easy to forget the comfort part of the song. And the resting part.

God rest ye, merry gentlemen (and maybe us gals too?)
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy!
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

Comfort and joy. As in – maybe I don’t need to run around and do every single happy thing today? Maybe I don’t so much need to fill every cookie tray full of sweets, but to fill my heart with His comfort and joy?

Maybe I just need to do what I can do today, and be comforted in the fact that what I can do is enough.

Know that who I am is enough, because He is enough, and more than enough, comfort and joy for this whole wide world.

I know it’s not biblical or anything, but didn’t the Grinch even say that Christmas doesn’t come from a store? Yeah, maybe it doesn’t even come from an oven either.

I managed to get about half of the baking done before I finally cleaned up the kitchen and dropped my weary self into bed for the night. There’ll be more sweet smells wafting through the house today. And even though today’s planner is already filled, there’s enough of a margin to fit in a few batches, and enough freezer space to fit some too.

And maybe I’ll just slip a little sticky note in the pages of my recipe book, the one handed down to me with my grandma’s recipes. Just a little reminder that enough is enough and perhaps I might want to cut a couple of recipes in half?

Or save a few for July and be merry then too.

~xo,
LuAnne