Community 12
The Year I Exchanged Stuffing for Stuffed Grape Leaves. For SheLoves Magazine.
The holidays have always been a time of togetherness and feasting for my family. When crispness enters the air, bringing relief from the stifling Georgia summer, my mind turns to standing in my mom’s kitchen and making noodles or pound cake, pulling out the card table to make room for everyone in the kitchen.
The year my husband and I found ourselves living in a land that was still new to us when the holidays rolled around, we had none of the familiar traditions to anchor us to the season of feasting and family.
Our family was celebrating together over 6,000 miles away. Fall for us in the Middle East was marked by one uncommon rainfall, not falling leaves. We spent Thanksgiving with a group of internationals, eating turkey alongside stuffed grape leaves, the familiar next to the new. There was food and laughter, but it didn’t feel like a feast.
Homesickness settled in over my soul in the middle of the holiday season, pictures from home brought reminders of all I was missing out on. The poinsettia and little Charlie Brown tree in the corner were the only evidence of an approaching Christmas until an amazing thing happened.
Twinkling lights started adorning the buildings next to us and lanterns were strung between balconies. Candies and dates piled up in the produce section of the little grocery store and makeshift stables were erected in the streets outside our flat.
The Muslim holidays occur at different times each year following the lunar Islamic calendar.Eid-al-Adha the cause of all of the decorations and excitement, happened to fall only a few days before our Christmas that year...
Today I am over at SheLoves Magazine talking about how I learned what a Muslim holiday taught me about what a feast should look like in our lives. Join me there?
How I Found Myself Needing Some Summer Slow in My Life
Summer has officially come to an end.
I mean, you still break out in a sweat just walking out to the car in the afternoon and the first official day of fall is still a month and a half away. But we are back into our fall routines and the time of staying up late and no homework is over.
As a mom who works full-time and is also a writer, summer doesn’t mean much change for me. The kids still go to “school,” the amazing kids camp offered to staff kids at the church where I work. My hours don’t change, so I have to make an intentional effort for summer to feel different.
It is also hard for me as someone who struggles with perfectionism and striving to make myself unwind. I knew going into this summer, though, that I needed a different kind of season. My life couldn’t keep going at the velocity that had become normal.
It wasn’t even a number of events or the two jobs that had become the problem. It was an attitude of my heart.
I entered summer just trying to make it through the week, counting down the days until the next family getaway or fun event. But my daily life needed a serious injection of the lazy days of summer.
I avoided social media because if I saw one more mom who had the summer off with her kids talking about how good life was by the pool I was going to throw my computer across the room.
Can you tell I needed a break?
There is this one thing we do every summer as a family that I begin counting down to in January.
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