I love Christmas trees. Christmas trees are a big deal to me. Growing up my dad always insisted that we have a real tree. We would bring it home and decorate it together. I'm pretty sure Amy Grant Christmas music played in the background and probably the Carpenters and Alabama if they had Christmas albums. My parents loved music like I do. I remember the ornaments we would hang every year and how just seeing them once again brought comfort and security to my young heart. I remember the anticipation that putting up that tree brought because we wondered what Santa would leave under it on Christmas Eve. I remember the multicolored lights and the angel on top. I remember the love of our family of five.
Because of my love of all of these things I have always insisted that we have a real Christmas tree. Brian has tried to convince me a few times that an artificial one would do just fine, but I always insist that Christmas is real and so must be the tree. Last Friday night we had planned to all go out and pick out our tree so that we could decorate it on Saturday. Well, we were wearing down after a long day, one of the kids had a friend over, and Brian offered to just go get it and bring it back. He also offered to pick up pizza so I wouldn't need to make dinner so this seemed like a winning plan. He came in the front door an hour or two later holding our Christmas tree on his shoulder with one arm. I immediately gasped and said "That Christmas Tree is too skinny!" You see, when I pick out a tree I look over several trees, find the one with no bald spots and wide and tall and buy that one. I'm guessing my husband was hungry because I hadn't fed him dinner and decided to grab the first one he saw. It was wrapped up, and he didn't have them unwrap it so he could inspect it. I would like to say that I immediately handled this whole tree situation with grace and dignity, but I was slightly upset. I like my trees like Brian likes his women - with a little junk in the trunk. I pretty much told him the tree was a disgrace to Christmas and that I needed a Christmas tree I could hide behind. He assured me that it would "fall" overnight and be full and pretty, but I knew that was a dirty lie. I mean, if your Christmas tree isn't bigger than your waist when it's wrapped up, it's probably not gonna be a bulging beauty when it's unwrapped. Saturday morning came and proved this to be true. There were bald spots, it was skinny, and the trunk actually wasn't even straight. It went straight up and then somewhere around the middle just went all rogue and off to the left so that it was impossible to stand it up straight. Seeing the error of his ways, Brian kindly offered several times to take me to buy another tree and find some lesser cause for the ugly duckling. And I was all in at first. I wanted my big, fat beautiful Christmas tree - not this tree that just got off a year long juice fast. But the kids insisted that they liked the tree. Ansley in particular believed that we could make it pretty. So I started thinking about the tree, and lots of symbolism came into my mind. I told Brian that I wanted to keep this tree and help it reach its full potential and fulfill its Christmas destiny. And suddenly I fell in love with the awful tree.
You see this tree this year may go down as my favorite tree, and here is why. Life is often a lot like the disappointing tree. Especially if you are a dreamer like I am. There is a tendency to imagine how perfect something is going to be only to be dismayed when it isn't. Sometimes you don't know what you are getting until you are already committed and you finally get to unwrap it. And sometimes when you unwrap it you realize that it isn't at all what you had planned. And the world we live in says this is an easy fix. If something or someone disappoints you then cut them loose. Start over. Your happiness is too important to waste a single minute on that person that let you down. If your job is hard - quit! If your marriage is hard - quit! If parenting is hard - well you can't really quit that one, but you can certainly wallow in it. The world tells us that the ugly tree isn't worth trying to make lovely. It tells us that an ugly tree will always just be an ugly tree, and that the more beautiful tree is always out there waiting. But this year we said no to giving up on the ugly tree and we determined to make it as beautiful as we possibly could. And it wasn't easy. It was really hard to get it to stand up right in the stand because the trunk was too thin. It was hard to find a direction to face it where it wouldn't appear crooked or show large bald spots. I had to push it away from the window so the light wouldn't shine through and show how barren it was. But the kids and I worked on it for hours on Saturday, and when we were done and it was adorned with pictures of my kids and a hundred family memories it was so very beautiful. It's not the most beautiful tree we have ever had, but it is most definitely the most redeemed tree we have ever had.
And every time I look at it this week I see life. And I see what a mess life can often be. And I see how marriage and motherhood and work and relationships are almost never exactly what we hoped or planned. I see how brokenness abounds and the people around me are all broken. And I see my own brokenness in that little tree. And I see how not giving up on it made all the difference. Instead of throwing that tree off into the woods to die, we put it in water and loved it and put some of our most precious belongings all over it. We didn't ask it to be worthy. We helped it become worthy. And I just wonder what this world would look like if we treated each other this way. What if we overlooked disappointment and saw potential? What if we loved through the ugly and then we got to see the beautiful come out? What if we honored our commitments even when they didn't turn out like we hoped they would? What if we poured ourselves into the most disappointing places in our lives and helped them to reach their full potential?
And then I see it at the top of the tree. That ornament with the painting of Baby Jesus in the manger. And it simply says "He Came". And I'm reminded that He did come. He came. The God who created this world and then felt His heart break as it turned on Him, crawled into the body of an infant and emerged from the body of a woman. He laid in a manger. And He grew, and He saw face to face how disappointing this world could be. But He didn't give up on us because of our brokenness. He became broken like us so that we could be worthy to be with Him. And if that isn't the most beautiful redemption story, then I don't know what is. There will always be brokenness in this world. There will always be brokenness in each of us. But because of Jesus we don't have to accept our destiny as the ugly tree. God will adorn us with all of the right things to be beautiful. He makes all things beautiful in His time. We just have to have to trust Him with our trees.
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