My Christmas Tree

I've always had a real tree in my house for Christmas. I would try to find the biggest and the best every year. This has caused "tension" in our marriage as Wes would get frustrated trying to put these huge trees in stands that weren't big enough or have to cut off ridiculous amounts off the bottom of the tree because I got one that was too big. Or we would even wake up the next morning to find out tree laying on the ground. Every Christmas it was the same thing.

So after the boys had left home, I decided to put all the misery of the Christmas tree behind Wes. It just wasn't worth it. Why was I heaping all this on him? Christmas was supposed to be a happy time - and the Christmas tree event was not a happy time for him. So, we went out and bought a very beautiful aritificial one - prelit - 1200 lights. I had to admit, it was a very pretty tree considering it wasn't real. I didn't have the great pine smell in my house like I had with the real tree, but it was worth it. I was very pleased.

After several years, some of the lights didn't work. That was ok, we could put them towards the back, hang a few extra ornaments and hide the fact that they weren't working. However, this year, when we set up the tree, over 400 of our 1200 lights didn't light. Almost half of our tree was dark....hmmmm....this wasn't going to work. Wes worked hours trying to coax them into working. He changed bulbs, fuses, went one by one - but to no avail.

We decided to just add new lights to the tree. However, they didn't match well with the old ones and it was very hard to get them on the tree around the prelit ones. They kept getting all tangled up. We really still liked our tree and didn't want to get rid of it, so we decided to take off all the prelit lights and then replace them with our own.

Once we started trying to take the lights off, we realized that every light was held onto the tree by 2 clips (which had to be taken off with pliers). Do the math - that's 2400 clips. It took Wes and I 8 hours to take off all the lights. By that time, I was so frustrated, I told him to put it back in the box......don't even want to deal with it anymore. This is how my whole year had been - and I wasn't going to go through it with this stupid tree. So, we boxed it up and sent it back to the shed. We just weren't going to have a tree this year - whatever, that was par for our lives this year. Why would Christmas be any different?

After a couple of days, Wes and I came home from shopping and guess what? There was this beautiful decorated REAL tree in my house. Austin, Shawna, Ashlynn, and the babies had come to my house while I was away and set up a beautiful tree for me. My heart soared. My kids loved me enough and knew I needed a tree - even when I didn't know I needed it. They gave up their evening to go pick out a tree (in the rain and cold), buy a stand and lights, go to my house, set it up and decorate it.

I'm pretty sure this will be the best tree ever. I don't think you could ever top it. It's not that it's the most beautiful tree I've ever seen, but the love that eminates from it is staggering. Just another way God is present....He asked my kids to show me how much He loves me. I am overwhelmed.