Real Life Merry Christmas

Last night my bishop and his counselors (think local pastor) visited my home to wish me Merry Christmas. This yearly visit always leaves me a little chagrined. I love them for coming — they supported me through the second marriage/divorce debacle and all sorts of other issues — but sometimes I wonder what they see when they come into my home.

Here’s what I see: me in my sweats, working to finish a final portfolio for the graduate poetry writing workshop I took this semester, my house in disarray. Shoes scattered around the front door. Piles of clean clothes, piles of dirty clothes. Socks the dog decided to steal. Shredded napkins and tissues and dismembered stuffies, also thanks to the dog. Unopened packages, open packages, packing material, unwashed dishes. Plates of mostly finished dinner, forks still spearing the zucchini. Piles of notebooks, some spiral-bound, some hardback, sitting next to stacks of poetry collections and heavy tomes like Emerson and Dickinson. The bishop and counselors sitting three in a row on the couch holding their elbows in, me on a strangely orange chair I picked up off Craigslist.

Real life in the kitchen in December.

And with the scene set, we exchange pleasantries, as one does.

And then one of them asks me, “What do you want for Christmas?”

Let’s take a full stop here.

Do you want to know the last time someone asked me that question? So do I. Because I have no idea. Not in recent memory, that’s for sure.

The way Christmas works in my little family of three, as a single mom, is that I do everything. I decorate with my funny birds wearing scarfs, I put up the lights on the front window, I drag the massive tree out of the basement, I decide what goes in the stockings I pieced and quilted and embroidered, I buy the presents, I stay up late on Christmas Eve to make it all look like magic. (I should note that my daughter will often pitch in on some of these activities, lest she thinks I don’t appreciate her help.)

If I have a few presents under the tree Christmas morning, it’s because I bought them for myself, and then wrapped them for myself. I suppose I could pester my kids to buy me a present — but something about that doesn’t fit my personality.

If this were a therapy appointment, I would tell you that my life is strung so tight, wishing for something at Christmas feels like a thing for other people, not for me. (We can certainly unpack that if you want to play therapist later.)

On the other hand, I’m full of wishes all the time. I wish for snow. I wish I could support my family on one job. I wish that my A1c levels would magically come down. I wish I could paint. I wish my sewing room was organized. I wish I had ruby slippers. I wish I had naturally curly hair in beautiful ringlets. I wish I wasn’t a single parent. I wish someone would pay for my kids to go to college. I wish I had a pony.

Wishing is easy.

So, what is this post even about? When I first started writing about this particular night, I wanted it to end with some call to action to remember someone on Christmas who you think gets remembered but doesn’t. But as I pulled at that idea, I realized that the amount of people who are celebrating Christmas in a way they never imagined or expected is probably off the charts. Also the number of people who don’t have a present under the Christmas tree unless they buy it themselves. So maybe this whole thing isn’t about what we want for Christmas at all.

Maybe it’s actually about how I see myself.

Real life in the laundry room in December.

That description of the house at the beginning could mean something unflattering about me and my ability to hold things together. I could decide that I am not delivering on the mom thing. I could feel like a low-grade failure.

But, I could also see myself the way those three men saw me last night. Because the other thing they said was, “You look so good.”

And I agree with them. I have come through some really difficult challenges, and sitting in that orange chair, I knew that I had hit a benchmark of survival — three years post second divorce and all that horror.

The dirty dishes mean my kids live with me. The laundry means I was caught up in my dream world writing poems for hours on end. The disarray means that for a few weeks I’ve come home from work, dropped my bag, and hurried to some amazing concerts. The fact that I even live in a house is cause for celebration. What joy to have a roof! To have walls! To have carpet!

I think the greatest gift you and I can give to ourselves this Christmas is to see every effort as success. To see ourselves with gentle eyes and a mushy, cellophane wrapped forgiveness. To see in the possible failures, the fact that we even made the attempt, and the endless room to try again a different way. To look at our face in the mirror and remember how precious we are.

In short, take a minute to remember that the little baby Jesus we are celebrating sees in you infinite beauty and potential all the time.

Real life Christmas tree with lights that don’t work and presents wrapped in Amazon shipping bags.