Happiness

My frustration level is fairly high right now as I just spent the last hour and 45 minutes, full speed ahead, picking up stuff, sweeping, cleaning the kitchen, and doing laundry. We have so many clothes. I'm not complaining at all, I'm very grateful...way beyond grateful as this is a great many children to clothe.

We have plenty of toys thanks to yard sales and donations. The bottom line is we need nothing; absolutely nothing. We have way more than we need so I can't see going Christmas shopping just to buy more stuff that we neither need nor have anywhere to put more stuff. Everything we have ever needed, we've received one way or another.

I don't want to participate in commercialism, wrap stuff, and then have a pile of broken trash at the end of Christmas morning. Our overall holiday stress level is high anyway as anxiety and bad memories from the past flood their souls. Where would i find a babysitter anyway just so I could shop?

I am going to buy the computers that I've saved up for as the kids never trash the computers nor strow them everywhere. We've had relatively few problems with them going off into areas of the internet where they're not allowed, I've addressed it each time and taken away their privileges. Kids are quick to tattle on others here and the computers are in the family room in plain sight.

If a kid shuts a screen off when I walk in a room, it's an automatic 'you lose your time' option. I reserve the right to look over their shoulders and read IMs or chat boxes and if they cuss or the other person cusses or is any way inappropriate, then 'you lose your time' kicks in.

My older kids will get money for Christmas to do as they see fit. That's simply all I can do. I can't even shop for the grandkids as I neither have the time nor do I know what they want or need. I can either feel bad about it or remember that I've done more for their parents than any other human on earth, and this is the best that I can do. I'm not exactly wealthy either in cash nor in time availability. But it still stresses me out.

I want Christmas to be family time with great food not the 'gimmes.' I've known adults that still expect a non-existent fairyland time at Christmas where they unreasonably demand that their partners, spouses or children read their minds and bestow perfect gifts that express whatever they need expressing and when their falsely high odd inner demands are not met, because who could possibly do so, then they are crushed by their own heavily laden emotional and material gimmes.

Life is about relationships not stuff. It's about people who care and are there for you emotionally and physically. Just as I refuse to allow my children to stress about buying perfect gifts for me, as I know there are none, so too can I not make up for their lost Christmases and childhood trauma.

I can only continue to provide love and stability, to meet their needs and to teach them about the deeper meanings of life that are more fulfilling than stuff. Stuff will never make them happy, they'll never have enough, someone will always have more and duh you can't take it to Heaven with you anyway. It's just all rubble and straw in the end.

What's inside oneself, one's soul, is truly all that gets to go. That's where one's happiness resides.