The story behind our Christmas tree

For the last 5 years, we have gotten a real Christmas tree. We excitedly head out to a tree farm or literally our neighbors land, find the perfect tree for us, cut it down, and then head home to make hot chocolate and decorate it all while happy Christmas music plays in the background... It is truly like a scene out of a Hallmark movie.

But this year was different. And I would love to tell you it was all magical and everything, but in fact it was quite the opposite. Behind the smiles in this picture above was a 40 minute timeframe in which we forcefully had to "quickly" go pick out a tree. The only 40 minutes we had to spare between church, meetings, and town events. It was after coming off of a horrible week of grief after we lost a family member to suicide and celebrated his life the day before.

It was the only 40 minutes to spare as we knew the week ahead would bring work, running, Christmas shopping, concerts, sports, dance, and anything else we didn't see coming.

Behind the smiles was anxiety, fighting, sleep deprivation, grief, the threatening that Santa wont come, and secretly praying for more minutes in the day.

I share this with you because it is SO easy to get caught up in the highlight reel of others when in fact there is SO much we do not see behind the smiles.

We have our tree. But it is honestly not very cute, has yet to be decorated, and is just sitting bare in our living room. This is the way it will stay until we have time to carry on the rest of our tradition as I refuse to add it in to another very short window.

This year is beautiful, but it can also be heavy and hard. I hope this story brings comfort to your day. To know we all have our things. I hope it makes you realize that some days its normal to feel like we can conquer the word and other days its normal to feel like we are just barely getting by.

No matter where you are at here in this time and season, I am rooting you on my friend. May we all take some time to breath and give grace to ourselves and truly get to enjoy the magic of this season. Our blessings will always outweigh our burdens.

Love + Friendship, Megan