My perfectly imperfect world

This is just some musings of mine lately...

I have come to see, with each new gift of life, how imperfect life is. And because life gets more busy, there is nothing I can do about it. But I'm ok with it and am coming to embrace this perfectly imperfect life of mine. The house is a bit more messy, and those messes stick around a bit longer. Things are not done to completion or not done at all and things that are done to completion are quite imperfect because little hands have helped in it. My sister is comforted when she comes over these days and comments that my house finally looks like hers!

Here is a little example...

Our Christmas traditions started two days after Thanksgiving, when we went to cut down our tree. We put the tree up, but it wasn't touched for 3 days. In my perfect world the tree would have been decorated in a day. The girls kept asking each day why the tree wasn't decorated yet. Well, mommy just hadn't gotten around to climbing through storage to get all the boxes down. (BTW, Dave continues to work a ton these days. His job requires much of him. When he's not on travel puts in lots of hours at home. This past week I think he topped out around 65 hours. Crazy. We're hoping it levels out soon.) So, much of this kind of stuff is mommy's job these days. Which is fine, but just takes a bit longer to get done.

We finally got the lights and ornaments down and lights...did I mention lights? Then we get half the tree all strung with lights, only to find out that all the rest of the lights are broken. Another day goes by with our half lit tree. I drag all the girls out in the cold rain to go to Michaels for more lights. Fast forward a few hours, tree fully lit, but baby is screaming, and we've got a blow out diaper. The big girls beg to start decorating and I say ok. I come back about a half hour later to see ornament boxes thrown all over the living room floor and ornaments hung all over the bottom of the tree. Perfect world - we would have been able to do this as a family over hot chocolate and Christmas music and I would have been there the whole time, showing the girls how to place the ornaments evenly on the tree. I will have to say it looked a whole lot better than I would have expected. Mckenna has a pretty artistic eye. I only put on a few cause I was busy trying to collect all the boxes and paper from the floor and find matches.

That night I had to wait until baby was finally asleep and Addie in bed to even attempt to decorate. In my perfect world, I would have done this over the course of a day with the girls, carefully thinking through how I wanted to place everything. But instead, tired and wanting to get to bed, I put things up quickly. I also wanted to surprise Mckenna the next day when she woke up. However, she didn't notice and I had to point out to her that mommy finally did decorate! "Oh" she said :). It's perfectly imperfect, but all these things are reminders of the gifts of life around that take up more of my time and energy. One day these little sweet lives won't be around anymore and I'll have all the time I need to do things like this. But I know I'll completely miss the life around me and want those days back. So, I'll just do what I can cause I want to enjoy them. The years are going by way too fast. My days can be long, but the years are way too short.

In my perfect world, I'd be able to post more things like this...I have lots of thoughts, experiences and life lessons that I'd love to record more of these days, but just don't seem to have the time to do that. In my perfect world I would be more organized, have lots of pictures to show along to way of our Christmas season so far, but I don't. Life to me is perfectly imperfect. Just the way it is for everyone. I think there is a purpose in that. Actually many purposes...to quench my pride, to make me desperate and show me how much I need a perfect Savior. I've already sinned much this week against my busy girls and husband. I don't want to get caught up in all that I need (err...want) to get done and forget to live out before little watching eyes what Christmas is about...A Savior coming to save imperfect people. May the Lord help me to remember this as we'll probably get to less traditions because of a tired momma, crying babies, hungry kids, and poopy diapers. But I want to be a peaceful mom, and enjoy this season with my children and husband in this perfectly imperfect world of ours, that I love!

Btw, just to get this post typed out I've let Addie play with a tube of glue. It's perfectly smeared all over now. Off to clean that up!