I stumbled across this photo of Olivia and Travis from last Christmas and as they say — all the feels. This photo was taken on Christmas morning at my beautiful #wfwhitehouse. My caption on Instagram referenced how this very morning brought all my ideas of what this house would be together. From day one, I envisioned the gathering of people in this home. I envisioned Christmas mornings and the family that would eventually fill its rooms. I remember being so happy and so content on this Christmas morning. 

Fast forward to a year later and so much has transpired. We won’t be celebrating Christmas in that house this year and you can read about why here. I moved from that home that I expected to be in for years and years, just two short months after this photo. Most of my year has been spent in this place that I call home for now and that’s where I’ll celebrate Christmas this year. 

The same tree is here and a lot of the same Christmas decor is sprinkled about. The same people will come to celebrate here, and there are gifts for the same people under the tree. So much is the same and so much is wildly different. When I posted that photo last Christmas, I really did not expect that so much would change in the coming year. While I’d been in conversation about the sale of the house to the Parish, I didn’t really expect it to come to fruition. And yet here we are. 

Here we are in an entirely different home with a rather unclear picture of how long I’ll be here. Here we are sending everyone a new address for which to mail me Christmas cards. Again. As it stands, I’ll have celebrated the Christmas holiday in a different home the last three years. In the last five years, I’ve lived in four different homes at Christmas. I don’t know how Santa keeps up. I don’t know how I keep up.

As I think about what I want this holiday to look like, I have to fight the urge of wishing things were different. I wish I knew that I’d be in the same place for Christmas 2020. I wish my little crew would all wake up in the same house on Christmas morning. Maybe next year? Who knows. I wish there was enough room here to host everyone I love and to watch them spread out all about the house. I wish my big Christmas tree didn’t make the living room feel quite so cramped. 

I read Ashlee’s post about holiday expectations early one morning and I realized that without noticing it, I was putting a lot of unnecessary expectations on this holiday season. I was secretly settling into disappointment over all of my holiday dreams that won’t be met this holiday season. I was feeling this silent disappointment before we even ate our last Thanksgiving turkey! I was setting myself up for failure.

Here I am, working to acknowledge this disappointment head on. I SEE YOU HOLIDAY DREAMS! And I see that you won’t all magically come true this year. Instead, this year might look a little messy or unsettled. We’ll squeeze by the big tree for a few months and I’ll wake up alone on Christmas morning. We’ll visit family at odd times and this 2019 holiday season won’t be the inspiration for a Norman Rockwell painting. Yours probably won’t either, and we’re both going to be ok. 

As we all head into this year’s hustle and bustle, I want to wish you the happiest possible season, no matter what it looks like. In the words of The Nester, which are usually reserved for home decorating, “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.” Let that apply to our holiday season this year too. I think this is what helped me be so chill, while also so excited, as we decorated for Christmas.

May our imperfect lives and even more imperfect homes still bring us a beautiful holiday season.