A Perfect Moment

There are times amidst the chaos of our lives that everything seems to fall just perfectly into place, where you could hardly ask for things to be better and you are suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude, you know? Our evening was just such a perfect moment. Christmas has not come gracefully at our house this year. For some reason I thought that having most of the Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving would make this season less stressful, and I imagined a blissful December of coming home from London and reading A Christmas Carol and delivering homemade fudge and peanut brittle wrapped up in pretty bows to the neighbors. Instead, we've given up all pretenses of putting lights on our house and we are feeling lucky that the Christmas tree has not fallen down this week.

So it was absolutely lovely to find ourselves sitting by said tree late this afternoon. In our cozy living room we could ignore the disaster of unwrapped gifts in the basement and pretend that we had not left the kitchen in a state of disarray after making muffins for a Christmas brunch with friends today. We just sat there quietly, the Christmas lights twinkling and the fire crackling, wrapped up in blankets and reading. Even when we got up and started doing stuff that magical feeling of peace and contentedness remained. From the kitchen where I was chopping up butternut squash and humming along to some Christmas music, I heard Jason call my mom to see how Baby Mason is doing, and it made me happy that we are now a part of each others' families. We ate dinner together and chatted comfortably about working for Congress and what we should make for our family for Christmas Eve dinner and whether Dick's would still be having a big sale on winter coats after we get back from Ohio. And tomorrow we get to go to church and sing, "O come let us adore him!" and then do it all over again (only hopefully with more gifts wrapped at the end of the day).

It is so pleasant to be in our lives sometimes, which is funny because I keep wracking my brain to figure out how we can simplify or slow down or just change the status quo. We are blessed to be warm and full and loved by each other and so many people around us, even when we are spinning around so fast we can hardly see straight. Maybe all that spinning makes me appreciate perfect moments when they come.