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Show Notes:

From gift guides to Instagram Ads, to those Amazon kids toy magazines, to Black Friday deals—everyone right now is telling us that we should be buying more, that we should have more, that we should be dressing in cuter clothes and decorating more perfectly. And today, I just want to be a voice that says: You don't.

You don't! You don't have to buy all of those things. You don't have to do more. The good stuff, the really good stuff of this holiday season, is found in the quiet, grateful moments.

For the full episode, hit play above.

This time of year, there is so much pressure. Pressure to buy so much stuff, pressure to lead your family in the most perfect Advent devotional and never miss a night, pressure to have your house in perfect order and decorated, looking a certain way, pressure to be at all these events and parties in festivities and to throw some of your own, pressure to make cookies, to make baked goods, to be the perfect mom and also somehow keep taking care of yourself, and work out, and be a wife and mother and all of i—all the things. There's so much pressure on us and it's a fight to cultivate contentment during the holidays because all of the noise and all of the voices around us that are constantly telling us that we need to be doing more and we need to have more.

And the antidote to all this pressure isn't actually doing any of those things.

It's a heart shift.

Contentment during the holidays happens in your heart. It is quiet. And while there's absolutely planning and adulting that has to take place and it's inescapable, just go back two episodes and listen to my Christmas Gameplan. I am all about planning and doing things in a way that makes sense and is thoughtful. And yeah, there's a lot of work involved in the holidays, but cultivating a heart of contentment comes from the quiet moments with the Lord, with your family in worship, and in words and music, and in just spending time with one another.

So I'm gonna gonna share just three simple ways for you to really cultivate contentment during this holiday season.

Number one is spend time with the Lord quietly, alone.

Point your heart back towards Him with scripture. Read things that constantly bring your mind and attention to Him and what He did at Christmas. This can look like you waking up a little bit earlier or maybe just grabbing your Bible before you go to sleep at night. It can look like just simply having children's books at Christmas time that help redirect your heart and your kids' hearts back to the Lord.

One of my favorite ones is Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd Jones. I love the illustrations and the story. It's so simple, it's the Christmas story, but it's so beautiful and it points to how creation longed for the savior to come, and then He came. I also loved reading back in college. I read An Angel Story by Max Lucado, which is the Christmas story from an angel's point of view, kind of from a heavenly point of view, what spiritual warfare was happening behind the scenes as Jesus came as a baby. It's a really incredible story that uses your imagination to kind of think, what would, what would that have been like?

Just spending time with the Lord quietly, reading things, putting on Christmas music that is worshipful and thinking about what God did is one of the simplest ways that you can redirect your heart towards the Lord and have a heart of contentment because that's what the holidays are all about. That is what Christmas is about. It is about this incredible God-man coming to earth and breaking all the rules and entering into the creation that He created so that He can redeem it, so that He can make His presence available to us at any point. And that's beautiful, but it takes us getting quiet to really remember and appreciate that. So just spend time with the Lord quietly. Quiet your heart, read things that point your heart towards Him.

Number two is to make a list of everything that you have to be thankful for.

We do this every Thanksgiving. You can go back and listen to practically kind of what that looks like for our family in Episode 033. But I love writing it down, and that's my big thing that I want you to hear in this point #2, is to make an actual list—like pen and paper in your journal on a sheet of paper. Make a list of everything you're grateful for. Do it as family at dinner one night, or if you're traveling this Thanksgiving, you know, ride in the car, make everybody take turns and say things that you're thankful for. Write it down.

But don't only just do this as a family. Make it personal. Write down what you are thankful for in your journal or in your planner. I was talking to a friend and we're both very nerdy when it comes to ordering our new planners for the upcoming year, and I was asking her, we order these customizable planners that we love, it's called Golden Coil and they're really beautiful and really well done. Anyway, she was saying that one of her favorite things to do every month is to just write down her wins, write down all the things that she was able to accomplish, that she did, all of the fun memories that she and her family made together, all of the things that she's thankful for. And I thought, I love that practice of writing it into your planner every single month. And so as I was designing my new planner for this upcoming year, I added in an extra just white page every month so that I could write in my wins and the things I'm thankful for every month.

Make it personal, make it a practice. Whether it's in your planner or your journal that you do just for you and your heart. Another option would be to make it big. Get a poster board at the grocery store or at Target. Next time you're in there, get a new Sharpie. Hang it on the wall of your home this Thanksgiving and Christmas, have your family involved in this and write down the big and small things in your life that you wanna see, visually, every day. Make it big. Write it on a poster board, all the things you're thankful for so that that visual reminder can be in front of you all the time and you can just turn that into a prayer of gratitude to the Lord.

So number one, spend time with the Lord quietly.

Number two, make an actual list of all that you have to be thankful for.

And number three, make generosity a priority.

I'm gonna give you just a bunch of ideas. You can do one, you can do several. You can do something different than what I've shared with you here. But do something.

Do something that marks your family as a generous family where you're thinking of someone else and blessing someone else. It is the most fun that you're gonna have, I promise. So here are a couple things that you can consider doing.

Give to organizations financially that are making kingdom differences locally, nationally, and internationally.

Leave a generous tip, $50, $100, for your restaurant waitress or waiter.

Or you can let your kids just choose another table in the restaurant and say, okay, we're gonna pay for another family tonight, but we're not gonna let them know. It's like a secret mission. Which table should we pay for? And let them kind of decide together and secretly pay for their meal.

Pack and send Operation Christmas Child boxes.

Serve at a local ministry.

You can organize a night of music. We've done this several times before Covid, and I'm hoping to see if we can do it again this year. I'm not sure that we can, but we would go to local nursing homes with friends and family members who love to sing and we would just sing. It would not be the most beautiful, perfect music, but it blessed those precious hearts of those men and women in the nursing home so much where we would just sing Christmas carols and songs that would bless them. Or if the nursing homes are still pretty strict with who they're allowing in, you can just organize a night of caroling in your neighborhood. It's so fun to bring back this old school feeling or style of just Christmas caroling and it just blesses your neighbors.

It's really sweet. We also love to incorporate The Giving Manger as part of our family, and it's a sweet little decoration that's very, very simple, and it comes with a book explaining kind of how you do it, but it really involves your kids in having a posture of thinking of ways to serve one another, serve neighbors, and just serve your community around Christmas time.

So just taking that mentality of like, okay, instead of thinking of what we can get and all the stuff we need to buy and consume, let's make sure as a family and personally we are redirecting our thoughts and our hearts and our actions towards those around us. And I promise paying for another family's table at the restaurant is gonna be something that leaves an impression on your kids. And also it's the most fun that you are gonna have at Christmas.

I hope this simple encouragement to just kind of stay grounded and really foster and cultivate a heart of contentment just shifts your mind and your heart today. Just to be a little bit more quiet and like I talked about in a few episodes back, listen to the Let Your Yes Be Yes episode just for you to model what contentment looks like with your life. Not to teach it, not to talk about it, just to embrace it and model it for for your own heart, but for your kids and your family to be who you want to be during Thanksgiving and Christmas: someone who's truly thankful, someone who's truly content, knowing that the presence of the Almighty God made possible through the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is truly the greatest gift and is accessible at any time.

May we live that. May you and I live that and be grateful for it every moment this holiday season, I'm gonna close with a prayer read from one of our very favorite books called Every Moment Holy. It's a book of liturgies about the simplest of moments and the bigger moments as well, but it's so beautiful. I love it so much. We read this every Thanksgiving and while it's kind of supposed to be a call and response type prayer, I think you're still gonna love it, even if I just read it to you as we kick off this holiday season and after this prayer, I'm gonna just share kind of a speed round of really fun holiday resources that I have for you, just hopefully that will make your holidays a little bit more sweet. Okay, this is called a liturgy for feasting with friends:

Leader: To gather joyfully is indeed a serious affair,
for feasting and all enjoyments gratefully taken are, at their heart, acts of war.
People: In celebrating this feast we declare that evil and death, suffering and loss,
sorrow and tears, will not have the final word.
But the joy of fellowship, and the welcome and comfort of friends new and old,
and the celebration of these blessings of food and drink and conversation and laughter
are the true evidences of things eternal,
and are the first fruits of that great glad joy that is to come and that will be unending.
So let our feast this day be joined to those sure victories secured by Christ.
Let it be to us now a delight, and a glad foretaste of his eternal kingdom.
Bless us, O Lord, in this feast.
Bless us, O Lord, as we linger over our cups,
And over tables laden with good things,
as we relish the delights of varied texture and flavor,
Of aromas and savory spices,
Of dishes prepared as acts of love and blessing,
Of sweet delights made sweeter by the communion of saints.
May this shared meal, and our pleasure in it, bear witness against the artifice and deceptions of the prince of the darkness that would blind this world to hope.
May it strike at the root of the lie that would drain life of meaning, and the world of joy, and suffering of redemption.
May this our feast fall like a great hammer blow against that brittle night,
Shattering the gloom, reawakening our hearts,
stirring our imaginations, focusing our vision
On the kingdom of heaven that is to come
On the kingdom that is promised
On the kingdom that is already, indeed, among us,
For the resurrection of all good things has already joyfully begun.
May this feast be an echo of that great supper of the Lamb,
and a foreshadowing of the great celebration that awaits the children of God.
Where two or more of us are gathered, O Lord, there you have promised to be
And here we are
And so, here are you.
Take joy, O King, in this our feast.
Take joy, O King!
Leader: All will be well!
Participants then take up the cry: All will be well!
Nothing good and right and true will be lost forever. All good things will be restored.
Feast and be reminded!
Take joy, little flock. Take joy!
Let battle be joined!
Let battle be joined!
Now you who are loved by the Father, prepare your hearts and give yourselves wholly to this celebration of joy, to the glad company of saints, to the comforting fellowship of the Spirit, and to the abiding presence of Christ who is seated among us both as our host and as our honored guest, and still yet as our conquering king.
Amen.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, take seat, take feast, take delight!

The liturgies in this book, were written by Douglas Kane McKelvie, and they are beautiful. You have liturgies for changing a diaper, for putting up your Christmas tree, anything you can think of, and the book's called Every Moment Holy. And that's the first thing I am adding to this little list of holiday resources. It's a great Christmas present, but it's also just our favorite thing to have on hand in our home throughout the year, but especially during the holidays.

Okay, also wanted to remind you, Episode 033 is Our Thanksgiving Tradition. I'm also gonna be linking to my Be Merry playlist. I created this Christmas playlist years ago. It has been my go-to Christmas playlist for years, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it's pretty, pretty great. Lots of beautiful songs in there. I also wanted to share that I'm gonna link to the book Every Moment, holy that I mention, but also specifically to the prayer that I just read, so you can bring that up.

And in the show notes, I'm gonna be including five ministries that we really love supporting and giving to. If you're looking for somewhere to give this holiday season and aren't sure where to start.

Two other things, if you are really wanting to foster more contentment, cultivate more contentment in your heart, especially after the holiday season. I always start my Contentment Challenge on January 1st, which is where I give up shopping for three months. You can learn more about that at nancyray.com/contentmentchallenge. And if you wanna do that alongside me and this community, I encourage you to try, if you've never done it before, it is hard, but it is so good and really refocusing your mind on what matters.

And also, An Integrated Life is coming back. It's my audio course on Home and Faith and Work, and it is gonna be opening up on December 1st for a limited time until the 10th. And you can find out more or join the wait list at that link.

Guys, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to Episode 174 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. I'm gonna be honest, I almost didn't record it. We've been sick more and it's been a really hard few weeks for us. And I just wanted to personally say thanks to my husband who looked at me last night, like 10 o'clock at night and was like, you have to record an episode. And I was like, I really don't want to. I am really tired. And I, yeah, he just said, you gotta keep going. And so I just wanted to thank Will for encouraging me to do that. And also just say thank you so much just for being a faithful listener here. I don't show up perfectly and sometimes it's really hard for me to get these episodes out, but I'm grateful to know that you're listening and it's what keeps me coming back, honestly.

So I'm very grateful for you.

Everything I've mentioned today, the playlists, the notes, the book, the links, all the things can be found at the beginning of these show notes.

Colossians 3:15 says,