After four days on the road I return home to the nest. It's trying to be Christmas in my tiny piece of this world. The lights are all strung from the gutters with care but it's rain that pours down and cloudy skies everywhere. It's trying to be Christmas.
I come home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and an aching back from carrying my pack. The tree is lit and tries to be Christmas, but .......broken light strands and boxes of ornaments litter the room. Not quite. We're trying. Because our family is fragmented trying to figure out the future. We're trying to be Christmas.
And in the midst of the trying we're growing and thriving and the man boy takes his drivers test in the worst of conditions and passes with a high five and a declaration that in the midst of the rain and the mess he will be King of the Castle for tonight. And we declare it to be so. Our mess being blessed.
And the young girl's plans fizzle and fade and together we bring bread and meat and cheese wrapped in paper into our little cocoon and hover over the crumbs while Taylor Swift brings us home on every station and we fade in and out of the crabby and the blessed. And the lights they swing in the wind pounded by the rain, trying to be Christmas.
And we gather in our home, we center our hearts and we decide to be all that we can be. We decide to be blessed in our mess.
And the movie is sad and the tears pour like the rain and I am cleansed knowing that we have what we have always had, we have the hope and the promise and the choice and we are blessed in this mess.
And the girl looks up at the tree of lights still scant on bulbs but high on intent and she sighs with anticipation, "I can't wait for Christmas." And in that moment the hope swells and we know that we are blessed in this mess. And our mess is someone's else's blessing and while the future is unknown and the mind runs wild. We are blessed in our mess.
