Hello dear friends.
How are you all holding up as this strange, turbulent year of Covid winds down?
Thank you for stopping by my living room today. I'm so happy with how I feel when I walk into our little cramped entrance. This year I decided to take my cue from real life and with everything feeling so different, I went off my typical grid and did whatever felt right at the moment. Like a lot of you, I have to find something to inspire me visually, and I fell in love with the words on this candle I found at a Home Goods store, and that's where I got my blue and green color theme.
There's been a lot happening in my personal life lately, and I'll share more later. But I do feel acutely aware of all the losses--little and big--that we've all been experiencing as a collective people. And I want to acknowledge those of you who are struggling with illness or worried about a family member that's sick, I know personally how that feels.
Even though my home doesn't reflect it, it's been a very stressful period.
Please know you're not alone. That's so important to say right now. Especially during this time of the year when it's so easy to look around at all these beautiful homes in blogland, where everyone can seem so 'happy' and 'merry.' And the worst thing that you can do, is compare yourself and feel bad.
Please don't do that.
Here's the lens that I'm choosing to view life through right now:
Yes.
It's been a year of heartache for too many people and it hurts my heart thinking about all the loss happening in the world. And yet --when I walk outside at night I can't help but be stunned at all the Christmas lights on my street and in my neighborhood this year. Why do all the lights suddenly look so much more brilliant this year? Are you stopping to stare too?
It's almost as if those of us who don't have to divert their energies to the urgent worries of un-paid bills and hunger and sickness-- are coming out in droves to say, "it's going to be Ok friends, we're almost through this."
I truly see the flood of Christmas lights as a beautiful metaphor for humanity. And no, this doesn't diminish the problems we face as a country filled with so much division and anger.
But our super power is that we get to choose where we place our focus, friends.
And at this moment let's choose to look around and be amazed by all the human energy being expended in creating a warm Christmas inside our homes and lugging out tangled strands of Christmas lights and standing on ladders and sweating in the cold air as you hook up the final lights. Not even realizing that this is your little contribution to spreading light out into our weary world.
I pray you hear my twinkling Christmas lights speaking directly to you my friends. Because they are saying,
I see you. And you are a luminous light, even if you don't feel that way right now. Please share my light if you need it.
Because we're all in this together.
Sending love and light,
