Full of Grace

This week my list of gratitude would have to be a mile long to include everyone who helped me and my family through this medical scare.  Instead I will tell this story:

Christmas is Martha’s favorite time of year.  She loves all the shopping and decorating and music and well, everything.  She generally spends weeks getting the house ready, inside and out.   Every room has something festive, an entire village is created and lights and greens brighten the yard.  But this year the kitchen renovation  went way over our time schedule and many things just did not get done.  We had put up the Christmas tree while Peachie was home for Thanksgiving, but that was as far as we got.    

Meanwhile, the kitchen is still not complete.  There is no finish around the flooring, there is no trim around the doors or window.  The back splash is still in uninstalled. We were buying a gas stove for each other for Christmas.  That hasn't happened yet either.   

And so I had promised her that this past weekend we would make a push to get it all done.   And then I got sick.  Crap.

On Monday night I came home from the hospital.  Martha had managed to install the kitchen sink (yay!) and put up a few decorations.   I told her it looked great and went to bed.  And I have been pretty useless since.

Last night we were both sitting in the living room.  The room was dark except for the nights of the tree.  And we just started to laugh because there was this beautifully decorated tree.   And some pumpkins from Halloween.  And some pilgrims from Thanksgiving.  Some of the shelves are bare where decorations were taken down but nothing put back up.  

I said “I’m sorry, this Christmas is just not going happen the way you like it.”  And she said “It’s a perfect Christmas.   We will be all together and that’s all that matters.”

And in the end, that *is* all that matters.  We will have Christmas even though the stockings are not stuffed and most of the decorations are still in the attic.  There are no lights or wreaths.  But we have each other.   We have lots of love and lots of laughter. And we have home.

I am so grateful to be home. Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person in the world.