Thanks for the reminder!

Tonight the goal was to finish (or start) decorating the Christmas tree and mantle. This would be a huge accomplishment because the tree has been in the middle of the living room for the past 6 days. Just standing there naked. Apparently last year our pesky cat must have chewed through a wire or two and half of our lights on our pre-lit tree are inoperable. We tried replacing fuses and bulbs and finally just decided to rig the thing by putting new strands of lights over and on top of the non working pre-lit lights. Now when you look at the tree, there are lots of lights at the top and bottom and somehow the middle just looks, well, sparse. Perfectionist that I am, I could have spent another week trying to fix the lights, but the kids were SO excited and anxious to decorate the tree that I finally just threw up some ribbon and told them to go for it. As I was silently fuming about the lights and watching them argue over ornaments, a song came on our holiday music station - Away in a manger, one of my all time favorite Christmas hymns. Coincidentally, both girls are learning all 4 verses of this song for our church Christmas program next week. As soon as they heard it start, they stopped bickering and started singing away. There is absolutely nothing to put you in the right frame of Christmas than listening to two little girls sing, "Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay, close by me forever and love me I pray. Bless all the dear children in thy tender care and take us to heaven, to live with Thee there." It seriously brought tears to my eyes. Lights, what lights? I am so thankful for the reminder sent straight from God about what is important about this time of year. I hope to keep that lesson close at heart as this month gets more and more crazy! Besides, I was pretty pleased with the end result - funky lights and all!