A grace-filled thing happened last week. While I was at church one evening, my husband and kids transformed our living room into Christmas. There was nothing more than an empty tree stand when I left. Upon my return the stand was occupied by a full and beautiful tree 8-foot tree (the size I had requested), the walls were decorated with archived kids’ art work, and my grandmother’s wooden painted Santa Claus was nuzzled nicely into our burlap wreath.
(Women, sometimes we need to be physically away for Christmas miracles like this. If you want help from your family, you sometimes need to ask them, find an excuse to leave the house for a couple of hours, and return home with words of thanks and no criticism. None.)
The next day, we hung lights and ornaments on the great big tree that has made its presence known. As its branches stretch out, it is quite difficult to walk around it without knocking off an ornament. Watering is an act of spelunking, except instead of a flashlight you have an awkward watering can.
A major problem, I realized too late, is that our Walmart tree stand underestimates the size of this gorgeous addition to our family. So, when I was sitting in the living room yesterday, after preaching a sermon encouraging people to keep their Christmas expectations from getting out of hand, and the tree attacked (a.k.a. fell on) me, I was surprised, then sort of ticked off at this giant tree, then thankful my two kids who were there came to my rescue. We found ourselves in an intense operation: stabilizing the tree, maneuvering around a broken bulb, soaking up the water in the carpet, retrieving soggy presents.
Finally the madness subsided. Perhaps it was akin to getting a crabby cat into a kennel, although I’m mostly afraid of cats, so I don’t know that for sure. Christmas is the giver of so much emotion, so many expectations, so many disappointments, and so much, hopefully, recognizing the people who are there for you when you need them, for example, when they bring home a tree without any help from you, and then that very tree tries to kill you.
Lisa Lewton 