Finally feeling silent night

As I reflect on last Christmas, we were a family still in transition. All of our Christmas things were in storage in Indiana, and I frankly wasn't sure how much of it we had managed to take with us. We had suffered a lot of losses, and were reeling trying to feel the spirit.

It has been a long year, full of trials and blessings alike. That is the way of things, living and dying, endings and beginnings. I have been having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit, even though I have been shopping for presents for three months now and listening to the Christmas CDs in my car. We finally boought a tree, unceremoniously last week. The tree was covered only in white lights, in a corner in the basement, awaiting children to adorn its branches, but days later they still lay bare.

Last night it was time to get the presents wrapped. I am pleased with the things I bought, and we had a bit of money this year, so we bought some great presents. Justin did the tape and the gift tags, while I wrestled with the paper. Each person gets one color paper so we can find things under the tree - hey there are five of us plus extended family, so the alternative is wading through a zillion things to find your presents.

Then the most amazing thing happened, as we were wrapping, I felt like the Grinch on Mount Crumpet, my heart filled with anticipation and joy at how thrilled the kids would be, about how cool the presents were for Justin and my folks, and the more I wrapped, the better I felt.

We were done at 12:30, I stacked the gifts and started taking them to the basement and the tree. The little white lights looked lonely, with the Fontanini manger as her only company. So I grabbed the basket of ornaments, things we gathered from Tsaile, Riodoso, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Logansport,Indianapolis, Lukachukai mountains, Steph's Nutcracker, the kids handmade snowmen and gingerbread ornaments, Justin's wooden duck and the turtle dove my mom gave me. With each ornament, the tree looked more and more like it belonged in our house, like Christmas was finally on it's way, pressing forward, pushing its joyful message even though we weren't ready.

It is good to have our things, good to have our dorky Christmas ornaments and funny bent wreaths to hang about. And it is good when the house and the heart finally feel like Christmas is on the way.