Merry Christmas Friends!! 🎄
A chance to start again after life got supremely messy
“Life is messy, but there's beauty in the chaos.” – Rachel Cohn
Welcome to Kara Outdoors! This is where I share about life, faith, the outdoors and wellness and some tidbits of wisdom and knowledge I’ve gained along the way. Subscribe below for free to join our community. If this is your first time here, you can catch up on the last post by following this link.
HUGE THANKS to all of you beautiful subscribers for sticking around while I disappeared. Life got really messy. I needed to focus on other things for a while and make some important decisions. Thank you for the time to do that and sticking around to find out what’s next.
All about the Messy Beautiful Chaos
Life took a drastic turn in the spring when I ended up on stress leave from my full-time job. I spent 3 months processing the last 2 years and working on myself, along with looking at how I wanted my life to go. I am naturally introspective so this wasn’t unusual for me but this season held harder questions than I was expecting to answer. And it was tiring and stressful in a way I wasn’t expecting. I am thankful for the stress leave that allowed me to figure somethings out but when I returned to work it did not go well. I promptly quit and have felt so much relief in that decision. I miss my coworkers and the patrons I served but it was the right decision.
It was a decision the Lord had been asking me to obediently say YES to for a while but I had refused and it had not gone well. Walking in obedience, rooted in love, is so much better than trying to push through in disobedience based in pride. Obedience to the Lord had not been hard in the past but I had gotten comfortable (and somewhat fearful) and forgotten that the Lord is my provider. It was a good reminder and I have had so much joy and peace since taking the step of obedience to quit.
So unemployed in August I spent some time with my family and friends in Manitoba, resting and listening for what the Lord had next for me. In that first week Jesus dropped a community connection in my lap, which turned into an employment opportunity. I started working again in September and I am loving it! I am now creating online Occupational Health & Safety courses, primarily for the oil and gas sector, but the skies the limit for online learning. It has been a steep learning curve and is challenging my creative side but in all the good ways. I also love working part-time from my laptop. There are just SO many other things to fill my time with and the online factor allows me to take work on the road.
That’s a little snippet of why there has been such a lag in news coming to your inbox but I am making a plan for the new year and hopefully you will stick around for a slight shift in my focus, some fun new content and getting to know me a little better.
The Advent Season - Waiting in Expectation
This is the season of Advent in the church calendar. It is a season of expectation and waiting for promises to be fulfilled. For many people it is the season of preparing for Christmas by purchasing gifts, decorating houses and workplaces and attending holiday parties. For me it has been a season of celebration of what the Lord has done in my life, while waiting in quiet expectation of what new things He will send my way in the future.
It was the beginning of Advent when I hopped on a plane to spend time in Ontario visiting friends in a place I used to live and work. I am still living in Edmonton but working from my laptop creating online courses allows me to travel and work on the road, as long as I have good internet.
I spent two weeks in Ontario visiting friends and reconnecting with people near Kingston and Ottawa. It was so fun to get to know my friend’s children better and be “Auntie Kara”. As much as I love that my life has taken me across Canada to live, it always feels like I am missing out on what’s going on elsewhere. So catching up and having some time with folks brought me a lot of joy.
While out east, I was thinking about my favourite Christmas traditions and memories which prompted me to ask the people I was with to share their favourite Christmas tradition or favourite Christmas memory. Many said getting together with family and friends was their favourite tradition. I thought I would share my favourites with you and hopefully you will also share your memories and traditions with me.
My favourite Christmas tradition
If we have ever chatted, you have probably heard me talk about Christmas lights. I L-O-V-E Christmas lights. I love lawns full of lights, single strands in windows or on balconies and everything in between. The only Christmas decorations I don’t love are those odd inflatable figures that look sad when lying flat on the lawn. But we can still be friends if you like those 🙃
Every year I drive around looking at Christmas lights or buy a ticket to drive through one of the displays that are available in my area. I just get so much joy from looking at them and how festive it all is. I love Christmas lights so much that it makes me sad when people start turning them off and taking them down after New Years. The best thing is when people leave their lights up and turn them on way in to dreary March nights. It helps to make March feel a little more bearable even as the nights feel so long still. I actually don’t mind if people keep them up all year.
I also love sitting in the dark beside a Christmas tree with the lights on, sipping on tea or coffee, just enjoying the moment.
One of my Favourite Christmas Memories
I was about 9 years old and my sisters and I were really into playing with Barbies. We had lots of Barbies, clothes, a camper van and other accessories and played for hours with those dolls. That Christmas morning we woke up and went into the living room and opened our stockings. When it was time for presents, my parents rolled something into the living room covered by a sheet. When they pulled off the sheet, there stood a 3 story Barbie house! My Dad had commissioned a local group to build it for us. It was taller than I was at the time and we could move between our bedrooms because it was on wheels. It was amazing and I remember squealing and being so excited! That present got a lot of use.
So what are your favourite Christmas memories and traditions? I would love to hear about them in the comments.