An Aus-Khmer Advent with chronic illness {A Chronic Voice Linkup}

Happy Birthday Jesus.  

“Articulating lifelong illness”. 

When I saw this tagline of A Chronic Voice blog I was excited.  If only I had something like this to read years ago when my husband’s illness was new and debilitating, perhaps things would have been less overwhelming.  Invisible challenges choked us that season, so to have them expressed feels like Ventolin for an asthmatic.   

The 5 link up prompts for this month seem like a great way to record our family’s lead up to Christmas this year. De-stressing, Savouring,Simplifying, Resting and Finalising.

De-stressing

Most of 2018 was one big de-stress for me! A “normal” year in my adult life usually involves either:  giving birth, having to travel overseas or moving house. Those events suck up all my emotional energy.   But this year was free of big transitions. I had time and energy for other things.

Having said that, the last few months both my husband and I have been unwell-ish. His chronic vestibular symptoms are always likely to flare up during stormy season so his sickness didn't take us by surprise. But we weren’t expecting me to also be fatigued. I  found myself tired in September, no matter how much sleep I got and how well I tried to balance bike riding and vegetable eating. I’ve had some tests and will have some more soon (anemia? thyroid?).

So we started December on low energy and not knowing if we would be feeling better soon or not. Knowing that meant we didn’t have expectations of doing too much.

Savouring

Although my husband Soeun has been sick recently we are savouring that is stress free compared when it was new. It was like a dizzy monster had invaded our lives as I wrote about here.  Now we know what it is and know what we can and can’t do about it.  It’s horrible to see him in pain, and so frustrating for him but no longer debilitating and unknown.

My first few Christmases overseas it felt so wrong that December 25^th  was just a normal day in Asia. After growing up in Australia where Christmas is a public holiday I found it hard to get my head around seeing kids go to school and banks open as usual. And once I was even expected to work on Christmas day. Luckily I got dengue fever so ended up staying away from work. Phew!

Christmas in Asia was weird before, but now feels freeing.  Celebrations can take on a life of their own in Western cultures, and people can end up spending too much, eating too much and being too busy. In my situation I have the luxury of choosing which bits of an Aussie December I want to enjoy and teach my family about (I’m the only one with an Australian childhood behind me). We can leave behind bits that would cost too much in terms of money or energy.

I think parents always have the tendency to want their kids to have certain things from their own childhood, I feel like I see that a lot at Christmas with expat parents. And its great to carry on some family traditions but I'm also mindful of the fact that our cross cultural kids are having a totally different childhood to us. We're savouring the chance to create new family culture rather than striving to replicate everything from our own. 

Instant Advent inherited from expats 

Simplifying

With limited energy between us, and no pressure to decorate our house, exchange gifts, or whatever other things people do in the West, we ended up just reading about the birth of Jesus from the Bible and from Bible story books. I was thinking about making an advent calendar and/or reading plan, but in the end I just grabbed a Bible one night and we ended up reading bits and pieces from the gospels. We had no plan, so there was no such thing as missing a night and then having to catch up.

We didn’t make the toilet roll tree like we did the last 3 years, even though we had everything to do it. But we did watch our Veggie tales DVD and listen to Colin Buchanan (both inherited from Aussie missionary families who left).

A small plastic tree (also inherited) did end up going up a few days before Christmas, unlike last year. Although we never did find that bag of tinsel or make those paper chains.

The kids were excited on Christmas morning when they saw a box of “new” toys waiting for them. We didn’t buy or wrap any presents but, again, thanks to expat families who have since left town we have so many kids books and toys. We only have some out and any one time, and the others packed away. Every few months we rotate, and each time it’s a bit like Christmas. And this time it was actually Christmas.

Resting

In November there was a day when I used up all my energy and then frustratingly it took me a few days to recover. Even though by that stage I had noticed I was fatigued it still took me by surprise.  So resting was a high priority during advent, even though I’m pretty sure I’m feeling a bit better.  I couldn’t afford to run out of energy with the possibly of my co-parent also fatigued, dizzy and in pain.

Finalising 

By the time December 24^th arrived I felt we had completed all the big Christmas things, and we were ready to just stay home, eat easy to prep food and relax.

Our Cambodian church celebrated Christmas on December 9^th with a huge loud colourful church service, complete with a banquet afterwards. Dances, songs, a nativity play and lots of decorations made it a big event.  In Australia church services are held on December 25^th but it isn’t a holiday here so each church decides which Sunday to have their Christmas on.  It was strange for me to be at church on December 23^rd and see that Christmas was over.  All the Christmas decorations including the tree had been taken down already, although it was not yet Christmas Eve.  

Thanks to American friends we decorated “cookies” with others. I kind of wished I had energy to bake, but I was happy we could join friends for festivities. 

We gathered with other English speakers on December 16th to sing carols and look at what was said about Jesus before he was born (Isaiah chapter 9). I was glad we could enjoy an Advent meeting even though we missed the Christmas service. (Expats had Christmas on 23rd but we were at Khmer church.)

So when December 25th arrived we were breathing easily, perhaps similar to the post-Ventolin feeling of an asthmatic.  It wouldn’t matter if either or both of us were a bit unwell on Christmas day as we didn’t have any commitments and the children would be happy to play (with "new" toys) and eat at home.  Staying home with just the four of us and some food is basically our favourite holiday. It was a relief to do it and I think we all enjoyed the day.