This Year's Story

As I sit here and write you, just over my computer screen I can see our Christmas tree, lights glowing. Wonder Girl is making hooks to hang our new ornaments, and Wonder Boy is humming in his room.

If you could see our house...oh my...

We have a stack of light strings that no longer work. I'm not even going to try to salvage them. Because....we have stacks--yes, I mean STACKS--of lights that DO work, and then we have a pretty large pile of unused boxed lights that have never even been opened. They are going to the women's shelter. <insert happy squeal>

We have a Santa who plays a saxophone, and two others that dance while he plays. We have candles shaped like hearths, ornaments, bells, and Santa himself.

There are multiple light up window scultpures, and a light up wreath for the door. We even have a projector to shoot pictures up on the garage door. The entire front of our house could be hidden by a glow if we wanted it to be.

That's only the shiny stuff.

Want me to tell you about the pot holders, hand towels, platters, candy holders, or Christmas figurines?

Yep, Christmas showed up and brought the whole 2000+ year old family this year.

But there is one box that is sitting in the corner unopened. It's the one marked "Family Ornaments".

It is filled with ornaments of Christma past, which the children do not want to see and most certainly do not want on our tree.

I understand.

But I miss them.

They are ornaments their dad and I picked out before we became parents and ornaments we picked when each child was born. There are ornaments for the children as they grew up and special ones Rob and I picked out together that reminded us of a season in our lives. There are ornaments that make me laugh every time we put them up...and some that I think of...and the tears come.

But the tears are okay with me.

Because the ornaments are my story. Figurines of my adult life put on a tree, reminders each year of the good stuff. And there was good stuff, and the good stuff is still good.

I refuse to let the bumps along the way define the whole journey.

Instead, I choose to see the journey for what it was...what it is...a story in the writing...and the story is good.

And one day that journey will go back up on the tree, and the young hearts in the house will laugh and smile, and the journey will feel good to their hearts. Maybe it'll even be next year.

But not this one.

And I'm okay with that, too. :-)

 There are ornaments on the tree, and they are the story of this year...

....and it's a good story. :-)