"It's the most wonderful time of the year!" Perry Como's voice singing those words is one of my favorite things. Thanksgiving is past, and now it's time to turn our attention to preparations for Christmas. How exciting!
Today I'd like to show you what I've already accomplished with decorating for Christmas.
Well, that's what I would like to show you. The problem is, I haven't really accomplished anything yet.
It's not that I haven't started. I've managed to put up the tree in the living room:
And I can see from this photo that the tree is leaning to the right a bit, isn't it? Oh dear.
It's not that I'm not looking forward to decorating for Christmas. It's just that I am disorganized and messy. So here's the truth about my Christmas decorating so far:
That's my guest room at the moment. As you can see, the makings of my Christmas decor are currently strewn all over the place. A discerning eye might even catch that my Fall decor is still waiting to be put in the attic.
Now, here's how I want you to see this room, the way it looks when it's all fixed up for guests:
Actually, that's not quite how it looks. I stole a piece of furniture from this room, so things are a little different now. And I had to take out the pretty rug because the dog peed on it. So there's that.
It can be so tempting to try to present only magazine-worthy loveliness on my blog. And I do love to make things pretty and to share ideas. But over this past year I've found that presenting only loveliness doesn't sit quite right with my spirit.
You want to know a secret? A few weeks ago the city of Durham turned off my water. Why? Because I'd lost the water bill and didn't see the warning letter they sent. Thank God I could pay the bill, so my water service was promptly restored, but if you'd seen my house on that day without water things surely wouldn't have looked too magazine-worthy.
That incident reminded me of the time that a good friend told me that there had been a mix-up with her utility bill and that her gas had been shut off. I sympathized with her having to deal with this inconvenience, but secretly I wanted to jump up and down and say, "Thank God! I'm not the only one!"
Maybe you don't have any organizational issues. Maybe you're a person who is naturally tidy and put-together. If so, I admire you greatly. The truth is that I wish I were like you.
But here's another truth, one that I need to learn more fully:
God doesn't wish I were like you. He doesn't wish that I were like anyone but me. He loves me just the way I am. He'll take me just like this—piles of stuff, lost utility bills, and all. Certainly God wants to transform my heart so that I'm more and more like Jesus—but He still wants me to be me. The real me. And that's how He feels about you, too!
So here's to real life: the beautiful and the messy, the organized and the disorganized.
I hope that by next week I will have some beautiful Christmas decor to share with you. For now, I'll just share this beautiful thought:
Tell me--are you the organized type? Or do you struggle like I do? Do you have "real life" scenes that aren't so pretty? I'd love to know!
I'm joining these wonderful parties:
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