My Perfectly Imperfect World: Going, Going, GONE

This year I have the after Christmas blues. As I look around at the Christmas carnage I keeping thinking, next year will be different. Not that this year was bad, but it was different. Change takes time to get use to. It also takes time to make changes fit into your life. My life seems to be a series of adjustments lately. Christmas was especially hard. We always had a system, a rhythm. It was the same every year when I was a kid, changed when I got married, and then again when we had children. Maybe the reason these changes didn't affect me as much is because they were welcome changes. Welcoming my husband in to our lives, welcoming a baby into the Christmas celebration makes it that much more wonderful. We had some small tweaks along the way, no big deal. This year how ever, we are welcoming a divorce, and a breakup in to our Christmas celebration. Not as fun and exciting as weddings or births.

My husband hates the saying "it is what it is" but it keeps going around in my head lately. I think it's my way of convincing myself that this IS my new life. I can't change it, can't push rewind or fast forward. I need to accept the here and now. I know it will all work out, we will find our new normal. That doesn't change the fact that change can be hard. My Grandpa use to say that change is one of the only things you can count on.

Don't get me wrong, We had a lovely Christmas. Full of loved ones, good food and drink, we were blessed with so many presents, even had a surprise visit from Santa. It's just that our new normal doesn't seem normal. It doesn't feel like a rhythm at all, but I know it will, someday. Maybe next year will be different, just as this year was. Maybe it will be different year after year. Maybe we will find a new rhythm to our lives that we we feel is even better than our old one.

My children had a wonderful Christmas full of love, laughter, abundance and magic.That is what truly matters. Although I could tell they felt it too, they are easily distracted by toys from Santa, and chocolate.

So as I sit in the mess of Christmas yesterday I ponder... What I will do different next year? What will make us all feel more comfortable? What will make it feel more like Christmas? So it goes, you live and you learn, things in our lives change and we grow. We step back and look at our lives and see what we need to do to feel content. And then. We change. We change our plan. We make new traditions. We change the way we look at things. Then we grow. We accept it. We embrace this life, exactly as it is.

Change is one thing you can always count on. I can also count on HOPE. I have such hope for my wonderful little family. Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for a brighter next year. Hope that I dealt the hand I got this past year with enough strength and dignity to make a difference. Hope that because we never lost sight of the big picture and what is important, we catch a few breaks in the up coming year. I also hope we remember the blessing we do have. We have each other and while we may not be perfect, I know we have many good years to come because we are perfect for each other. So, it wasn't perfect. We still loved, we laughed and we all had enough. Enough food, enough gifts, enough love. That is what matters.

As I head off to clean up the abundance of this years Christmas, I will make notes of what I will do different, but I will also make notes on what I wouldn't change for the world.