I think we can safely say Christmas 2017 has not been the greatest of Christmas periods for me. It is not what I expected, and definitely not what I am used to.

We knew it was going to be a quiet day, after all, the husband was working. He always does do a few hours, it’s the nature of his job. That was never really the issue with the mother in law coming round for Boxing Day brunch today and us heading up to my folks tomorrow.

But it was a very quiet end to a very quiet season. I only managed one of the Christmas meals before I caught a horrid stomach bug which laid me up on the sofa for about 5 days. I managed the last two days of the week aided with my hot water bottle in the classroom! A weekend of buying presents, wrapping presents, marking mocks, and trying to catch up, then the start of a sore throat on the monday. By Tuesday I had razor blades in my throat, gunk on my chest and an exploding head. It was the end of term Eucharist so of course I went in, to be regularly greeted by ‘what are you doing here?’ And ‘you look awful’! A week on and today is the first day since then that I have managed to stay awake all day.

I’ve had a week of moving from the bedroom to the sofa, and back to the bedroom again. I did have a shower and get dressed for Christmas Day, but that pretty much took out all of my energy.

I do seem to be coming round the corner now, it’s almost as if I needed a Christmas Day seizure to knock it out my system (unfortunately not a joke). But as I said not really the Christmas I had envisaged.

However, as always I have been week and truly blessed. Including friends dropping things in from school as I missed the last day, others getting paracetamol for me to avoid me leaving the house. So many who have been sending lovely messages each day to check how I am, and to make me laugh. All I wanted was a chat but they knew better than I did that actually I could barely talk, and trying to would probably only make it worse.

The one thing I really wanted this Christmas break was a rest…. I didn’t really rest at half term and feel like I’ve been playing catch up ever since – and I think we can safely say that I have rested, more than I have done in a very longtime.

So it’s not been epic, it hasn’t been surrounded by friends and family, but my Christmas really has been filled with blessing. This is what Christmas is all about, love, care and compassion… which the husband has given by the bucketload in spite of him working hard, and not feeling fantastic himself.

So now… an early night so we can get a couple of days up in the homeland with some family time!

Christmas blessings and God Bless x x x