I love Christmas. (I know it’s April, but bear with me!) I am usually ready to start decorating the house in October- as soon as the first flash of cold breeze hits. My husband has a hard and fast rule that we don’t decorate until after Thanksgiving, and since I need his muscles to drag the tree out, I abide. So, the Friday after Thanksgiving, I am like an eager puppy waiting for all the treasures to be pulled out of storage.
Growing up, we didn’t have a Christmas tree for a long time, and when we finally did, it was pretty pathetic looking. It had some lights and a star and some unbreakable plastic ornaments. But, we had gone for so long without a tree that we loved it. When I got married and had my own house, I was so excited to have my own tree that I could decorate however I wanted. Our first tree was given to us by our neighbor- who was throwing it away. You had to put it together but the branches were all color coordinated to show where they belonged on the “trunk”. It had white lights and a bunch of colored ornaments. I didn’t have a theme. Well, my theme was whatever ornaments were on sale from the year before. It looked a little chaotic, but it was mine. Year after year, I collected different ornaments; still never really having a theme, but I was sort of heading in a general direction.
And then, we had kids.
You know what comes with kids. Handmade ornaments from church and pre-school and all sorts of events. Ornaments that they are so SO proud of, and you are so SO proud for them… to stay in the drawer. We had homemade ornaments and homemade wreaths- with finger prints and foot prints and poorly painted letters. Wow. Who knew my kids were so UN-artistic?!
I would hang all of these ornaments and wreaths up, and then I would look at my friends’ perfectly done, perfectly decorated trees and sigh. When would mine look like that?
Never.
Every year when the Christmas decorations would come out, the kids would rush to find the ornaments they had made and PROUDLY put them on display. One of those years, I started the tradition of buying them an ornament- something to reflect their interests. My tree suddenly had pirates, action figures, princesses and sports memorabilia on it. I definitively said adios to my dream of the perfect tree.
This year, as we were putting the tree up, my kids pulled out their handmade ornaments and decided that those would go on the bottom of the tree, where no one would see them. They even debated keeping some in the storage bin and not allowing them onto the tree. I said “No way! They are ALL going up!” They excitedly pulled out their ornaments, one by one, and talked about each one. We have a paw print ornament for our dog. That one went front and center, along with the ornament that we have that looks just like him. This year, I bought my daughter a whisk (she loves to cook) and sloth (she loves sloths), and my son a cheeseburger (guess why?) and a Play Station controller. We laughed about the handmade wreaths and marveled at how small their feet and hands were back then. All of these treasures that I once wished I could hide, I was proudly putting on display.
To someone outside of my family, my tree looks like a chaotic mess. But to me, it’s beautiful. It tells the story of our family.
In Joshua 4, Joshua leads the people through the Jordan river. This was not a small feat. This was a nation of people, walking through a hefty body of water. In verse 5, Joshua tells twelve men, one from each tribe, to take up a stone as a memorial of this miraculous feat. What may have looked like a dumb rock was meant to be a memorial.
I know that there are places in our lives that we think are messy. Maybe it is a physical place. Maybe it’s a spiritual place or even a mental place. I want to encourage you today to not be afraid of your mess, your chaos. God is in there with you. He is still writing your story. There is beauty there. His Glory is there. It may not look the way you wanted or the way you planned, but when you look back, you will see His beauty in it.
~Shiney
