Set Free

A heart at peace gives life to the body.

—Proverbs 14:30

As the Christmas season unfolded one year, I was given opportunity after opportunity to decide how much to do—or overdo. A new friend invited me to a cookie exchange on the only night Aaron would be home until Christmas. We didn’t have plans, per se, but I had a sense we needed to be home together. So I said no, which was hard for me, and our little family did approximately nothing, which was exactly what we needed.

I cohosted a party, and one of the things I brought was frozen meatballs. I love to cook, and I was planning, of course, to make them from scratch. But it was too much for me, too much time and energy I don’t have in this time of the year.

And, of course, no one cared. That’s the lesson in this for people like me who sometimes get wound up about doing things perfectly: 90 percent of the people in your life won’t know the difference between, say, fresh and frozen, or handmade and store-bought, and the 10 percent who do notice are just as stressed-out as you are, and your willingness to choose simplicity just might set them free to do the same.