Being Advent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Being Advent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Barefoot and Pregnant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-23T09:18:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-01-11T22:53:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html\",\"name\":\"Being Advent\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-12-23T09:18:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-01-11T22:53:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757\"},\"description\":\"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Being Advent\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/\",\"name\":\"Barefoot and Pregnant\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757\",\"name\":\"Calah Alexander\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf23055e0549e8c78beb5077e949befd?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf23055e0549e8c78beb5077e949befd?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Calah Alexander\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/author\/calahalexander\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Being Advent","description":"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Being Advent","og_description":"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html","og_site_name":"Barefoot and Pregnant","article_published_time":"2010-12-23T09:18:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-01-11T22:53:10+00:00","author":"Calah Alexander","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Calah Alexander","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html","name":"Being Advent","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-12-23T09:18:00+00:00","dateModified":"2015-01-11T22:53:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757"},"description":"This is going to be a quickie post, just to let you all know that actually I am still alive, just very, very busy with family and friends. I promise to be","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Being Advent"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/","name":"Barefoot and Pregnant","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757","name":"Calah Alexander","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf23055e0549e8c78beb5077e949befd?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf23055e0549e8c78beb5077e949befd?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Calah Alexander"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/author\/calahalexander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":335,"date":"2010-12-23T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T09:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent\/"},"modified":"2015-01-11T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T22:53:10","slug":"being-advent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2010\/12\/being-advent.html","title":{"rendered":"Being Advent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

However, to whet your appetite for what is to come, I\u2019ve been working and re-working a post that I hope you will all find interesting. It\u2019s a love story of sorts, and I\u2019ll have it up after Christmas and hopefully before the New Year.<\/p>\n

Things have been bustling and busy since we got to Texas. We\u2019ve been able to spend a lot of time with family and friends, the girls had a wonderful joint birthday party (many thanks to Kate Wicker<\/a> for the pirate theme idea), and we\u2019ve finished making most of our Christmas presents. However, all that activity hasn\u2019t left very much time for the slow advent movement\u00a0<\/a>that Melanie wrote about. Before we left, I had been trying to implement as much Christmas story-tellling and saint-day celebrating as I could, without planning, without stressing, just emphasizing calmness and trying to foster in my children the joy of the season by being joyful myself. I was really getting in to the groove, too; we were spending less time watching movies and more time in the kitchen baking or in the living room playing together. We were singing snatches of what Christmas songs I could remember and talking about the Annunciation, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachariah. I was feeling calmer and more at peace, and so were the girls. Hitting and tantrums were down to a minimum, and the hope and joy that Christmas promises seemed more real and more tangible than ever before.<\/p>\n

But traveling and visiting brought it all to a screeching halt. I\u2019ve been busy and distracted, answering questions with an incessant string of \u201cnot right now\u201d\u2018s. The girls and Liam have been bundled up and taken hither and thither, missing naps and eating on the go, bombarded with hugs and kisses from loving aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. Any quiet time they\u2019ve had has rapidly devolved into tantrums, hitting and then collapsing, exhausted, in front of a movie. \u00a0The Ogre has been spending all his time with us, helping me with the kids all day and then staying up late to work on our Christmas presents. He\u2019s had very little time to study and even less time to sleep. We\u2019ve been short with the kids and short with each other and have not managed to keep that peace that we\u2019ve so wanted to preserve this Advent.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to figure out how to bring some peace back into our final days of Advent but kept coming up empty-handed. We\u2019re just busy, plain and simple. We hardly ever get to see our relatives and I\u2019m not willing to give up this precious time with them when it likely won\u2019t happen again for a year. We still have presents to finish and wrap, Christmas bread to make, cookies to decorate. \u00a0There\u2019s just no way to slow down, to create that peace that we were enjoying at home.<\/p>\n

A few nights ago we left a Christmas party at the home of one of my dear friends, a Naval officer who has spent the last year underway in a submarine. We had a great time but the kids were exhausted, so we left before my parents. When we got back to their house we realized that we didn\u2019t have a house key and no one would be able to let us in for at least twenty minutes. I was irritated and tempted to vent my frustration. The kids were tired, it was way past their bedtime, the cold air woke Liam up and he was screaming, and all I wanted to do was get them to bed and have a few minutes alone with a book.<\/p>\n

Fortunately that morning I had come across this wonderful post<\/a> about Advent. It had stayed with me all day, hovering around the edges of my thoughts and actions. Instead of getting angry about being locked out, I laughed it off and grabbed the baby out of the carseat. The Ogre and the girls played Mother May I in the driveway while I rocked Liam on the porch, singing O Holy Night and gazing at the nearly full moon through the bare tree branches. It ended up being a wonderful twenty minutes. The girls drifted in and out of my song, singing along whenever they came near me. Liam and I stared at the moon and each other, enjoying the stillness and the song. The Ogre and the girls provided a lovely background noise, a tapestry of giggles and squeals and \u201cMother May I\u2019s\u201d.<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, that\u2019s been one of the best moments we\u2019ve had since coming to Texas. And it wouldn\u2019t have been possible if I hadn\u2019t let it happen.<\/p>\n

The secret to real Advent peace isn\u2019t clearing a schedule, baking cookies, or telling stories. It\u2019s just letting that peace in, softening our words and voices, slowing our movements. Reacting positively instead of negatively. Being the spirit of Advent instead of trying to create that spirit. We won\u2019t be having a quiet and calm Advent in the midst of traveling and visiting, but we can still have a peaceful one if we choose to.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"