When All You Want for Christmas is a Silent Night

My most together friend messaged this morning saying she was going to stop by with a gift for me.
The friend with the always smooth hair.
The friend with the always clean car.
The friend I cannot imagine ever has any issues with eating while wearing something white.

My first thought upon reading her message was how sweet that she had thought of me,
but red-hot on the heels of that thought was my second one:
I needed to hide the Costco sized package of Cup o’ Noodles Justin had just brought home from work.

She probably made something from a French cookbook for lunch.
I could never reveal to her this much styrofoam.

I’m normally not the hide-myself type.
My friends know that what they see is what they get, and often they see a whole lot;
But I admit that there was a tiny bit of scramble to try to pull my life together before she showed up at my house today.
Crumbs on my counter,
paper bags strewn all around.

At the moment of her message, I was crying sitting alone on my couch.
I had just made myself breakfast.
It was 11am.
The often tense feelings accompanying this season had been even more compounded in the last several days,
after all, life doesn’t stop just because it’s Christmas.
Your kids still resist you,
Pre-teens still exist,
That person you’ve been missing maybe will just keep right on being missed.

To put it plainly,
my friend’s life package always seemed like it was professionally wrapped up at Macy’s,
while mine was feeling like more of a newspaper and duct tape wadded up ball.

I have so wanted one picturesque,
Christmas card-like day this month.
Snow falling softly…warm little cabin in the woods…
Perhaps something red and bulky-knitted, reading by the fire…

One perfect-feeling silent night.

Instead, what I have had this year are things like Chloe bursting into the bathroom while I am getting ready to report that
“Tessa said that if I don’t give her one of the perfumes I just got from my Secret Santa she will text all of our friends that I pooped in the shower.”

I would love to be experiencing the night air in a remote mountain cabin,
But instead, what I was busy experiencing this week was hitting and killing a squirrel in a van full of girls on the way to church on Sunday morning.
Nothing like that to punctuate an already hard week.
Nothing like shrieks of, “I FELT A BUMP!” or
“DO YOU THINK HE HAD A FAMILY HE WON’T BE GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS TO”
or a softly muttered,
“Geez….R.I.P. GOD’S CREATURE”
to really just bore in the fact that your average type of morning is never really depicted on any Hallmark Christmas card.

I received one in the mail this week that had shown a lone lamppost in the snow.
I just stared at that lamppost, willing myself to be standing right beside it.
Wishing I could be heading to a quaint little golden windowed cottage somewhere in the background…
Maybe I would be carrying cookies and wearing a soft smile.
Church bells could play O Holy Night.

But, coming to interrupt this Christmas lamppost fantasy was a word from my sponsors:
The dog had eaten an entire breakfast sandwich in one bite and so “Now I have no foooood.”

My Christmas hasn’t felt very well-oiled this year.
My Christmas has frankly barely chugged along.

So, there I was scrubbing cereal off the counter, and frantically straightening all wayward looking holly
FA.LALA.
LA.
LA.
when there came the knock at the door.

I smoothed my hair, and brushed off my shirt, and hoped she wouldn’t notice my very oddly paired outfit – questionable in both color and season combination;
But, when I opened the door expecting to see an even more upgraded, Christmas-version of my most together friend,

There she stood in plain gray sweat pants.

No makeup,
hair askew,
her three year old plastered to her calf.

As she hugged me she apologized.
“I haven’t even showered today,”
and if this perfect message that I was not alone in my chugging was not gift enough,
into my hands she pressed a beautiful red foil bag.
I opened it to discover what she had brought me was a blank canvas.

I had told a group a week before that what I most wanted for this next season of my life was to get back to myself, and some of the things I love that have been kind of lost along the way.
This gift said she heard the heart of what I had said then.
The card told me that I was seen, as well.
I bit my lip as I read the words she had written.

“Thank you for always being yourself,
and for allowing me to be myself.
I so appreciate that you see ALL of people and love regardless of what you see.”

I looked up at her after reading it with tears welling in my eyes,
speechless about such a gift,
especially on a day like today;
But when I did, she simply did a rolling hand gesture as if to say,
“Now, continue on as you were.”

Tonight I have been looking at that blank canvas, and it has been speaking to me.

It’s telling me I get a fresh start when things haven’t gone exactly as I planned or hoped.
Christmas.
Life.
The raising of children.
The state of my house.

In that, it also speaks to me of the true meaning of Christmas:
Love giving us all a fresh start.

That canvas presented from someone I judged would show up perfect,
but whom I saw a different, sweat-wearing even more kindred side of.

A blank canvas stands for the thought that anything can happen next, so to never give up;
Dare I hope not even on having just one perfect-feeling, even just PARTIALLY silent night.

This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.

Mom Outnumbered

Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.