Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

It’s supposed to be windy today. Really windy. The fire department tweeted to ‘expect power outages’. My weather app says ‘Significant property damage may occur resulting in structural damage.’ I say bring it on. We could use a nice blast of fresh air to clear all the stagnant, water-logged stuff away. Besides, if the power is out or a tree is laying in the middle of my dining room, I’ll get to skip out on the whole, ‘What’s for dinner?’ thing, wouldn’t that be nice?

Zoe enjoying the tree with me

Wind or no, today, I really need to focus on drinking more water. I was going to start yesterday, and I did manage to get down one glass, but really? One glass of water doesn’t cut it. Aren’t you supposed to do 8 cups a day minimum? Why is that so hard for me lately? On the bright side, I did have three cups of coffee yesterday, and I did manage to choke down a second glass of red wine. But really, that’s only because of the article that says that drinking a glass of red wine is like going to the gym for an hour (without the sweat). Seriously. Read it yourself if you don’t believe me. I am not even making this stuff up, although I would have liked to be the lab rat for this study!

So, I spent, in theory, two hours at the gym yesterday. I guess that means I don’t have to go today. Thank goodness. I’d hate to risk my life in the wind storm.

I have a little easel chalkboard that my husband made a few years ago for a surprise birthday party that I was throwing for kid #2. On one side, it says “Go Cougs!” with the Washington State University logo on it, because with two Coug-kids, you have to be ready for game days- even if your team is likely to lose.

The other side of the easel I use to note whatever holiday, birthday or event is happening.

Last week, I erased the Thanksgiving message to put a Christmas one up. I chose “Let your heart be light,” from the song, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. The idea of hearts being filled with joy this time of year and letting your troubles go was the intent of the song, and I’ve always liked it. Honestly, I like most Christmas songs- and I know all the words to all the verses of them too, but that’s another story.

The more I’ve stared at this board though, the more the meaning of the words have changed for me. Does that ever happen to you? You stare at something so long that it no longer makes the sense that it once did? It happens most often to me with word spellings. If you look at a word long enough, it stops making sense and you start wondering if you spelled it right. Or is it just me that does that? Anyway, I’ve stared at this chalk board enough times that I’ve completely changed the meaning of the words from ‘let go of your troubles and be happy’ to ‘let your heart be (THE) light’.

Christmas is about Jesus. I mean, if you can get past the commercialism that we’ve bought into. We put up trees and bake cookies and go to Christmas parties. We spend hours shopping and wrapping and watching Christmas movies. But every time I walk past this chalkboard, I am caught up in thinking that this season, of all seasons, is not about Elf and Target. It’s about my relationship with Jesus. In the Bible, Jesus refers to Himself as the Light many times. If I look at the phrase ‘Let your heart be light’ in that context, don’t the words magically change meaning? Let your heart be Jesus. Wow. It’s really beautiful.   What a different Christmas it would be if we could all let our hearts be (the) light.

That’s the kind of Christmas I’d like to have this year~

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