the christmas tree that toddlers decorated.

behold, my christmas tree.

i am madly in love with it. it's a $400 tree i got for beyond clearance at hobby lobby last season as they were sweeping up the last plastic pine needles sometime in late january. it was the display. it was $80. i haven't posted this until now because i have been too busy staring at the greatest christmas tree ever.

being that i love the tree so much, i thought i'd be anal about its decoration. the day after thanksgiving, i happily let my children cluster 42 ornaments together on each of the bottom limbs, thinking i would spread them out after they went to bed.

i never did.

i love it this way. it's better this way.

the tree's bottom limbs, just the right height for chubby little 2- and 3-year-old hands, are bowing with the weight of joyfully placed ornaments, joy that's multiplied 100 times over in my heart as i watch my two beautiful children take in the season.

THIS IS WHAT IT'S ABOUT PEOPLE. it's about beauty. not perfection. as days and weeks and years go by, i am finding more and more beauty in imperfection. not always. but when i allow myself to be led to focus on the right things, i often discover what is important is so often pushed aside for the urgent and in-my-face.

layers of imperfectly placed ornaments serve to remind that we, imperfect people, all jumbled up and confused about who and where and what we are to be, go and do, are the mess that our Holy King was born in a manger and crucified on a cross to save.

i think even when they're 15 i will request that they jumble up all the ornaments on the bottom branches. it's messy with a bird's-eye-view, but step back and behold the big picture that is beautiful despite it all.