Throughout the western Christian world, Advent begins this week. A season often lost among the secular preps for the Christmas holidays. Advent is a time of watchful waiting with its own traditions and music, not unlike all the religions that I can think of that incorporate some sort of waiting for or ramping up to the “big” holiday. And like Advent, most often those periods are met with somewhat tepid responses.

Like most Americans, we’re probably waiting for Santa. And let’s face it, we’re not exactly great at waiting. Christmas decorations already are up everywhere, including office lobbies, restaurants, and airports. And I bet most of you reading this have your houses decked out too. Granted, there are only 25 days until Christmas, but I’d say over half of those decorations were put up more than a week ago.

We really don’t like to wait. I was out for Thanksgiving dinner. After the meal, our hostess asked if anyone wanting coffee. “I’ll warn you,” she said, “it’s from a Keurig so you’re going to have to wait for it.” Last time I checked, my Keurig spits out a cup of coffee in abut 30 seconds. Quelle horreur!

We complain about waiting in line and we complain about waiting on hold (but companies who insist on using robo-answerers instead of human operators deserve all the complaints you can throw at them). We look for the fastest route to wherever were driving and the shortest lines at the local mega-mart.

We can use a period like Advent to slow down and appreciate all the season has to offer. Imagine the calm you might experience if for each day in December you spend a quiet moment in meditation, solitude, prayer, or just staring out the window and enjoy a moment not spent in cleaning, decorating, baking, writing and mailing cards and packages, and complaining about where all the time goes. Doesn’t matter where, it just goes.

I think I’d take some of those moments for yourself before someone else gets to them.

Time again for a shameless plug for the latest Uplift blog post. Even though Thanksgiving is over, it’s still a good read about how it’s a good time to celebrate our love and dysfunction. Yep, they really do go together. Despite life’s imperfections, it’s still a celebration worth being thankful for.

But before you go look, have you still not thought about joining the ROAMcare community and have the weekly Uplift blog delivered to your email as soon as it hits the website? In addition to an Uplift release every Wednesday, you will also receive weekly a Monday Moment of Motivation, and our email exclusive Friday Flashback repost of one of our most loved publications. All free and available now at  ROAMcare.org.