January 3 – “The race is on”

 

 

The last of our kids finally went home yesterday.  This place was so quiet.  And the departure of Josh and Christi and Zak and Caleb meant one thing to Chris: take down the Christmas decorations.  She is not one to linger on and on with stuff like that either.  In fact, as they rounded the corner and we made our final weaves and headed back into the house, she nonchalantly reached up and pulled down the wreath hanging by the front door.  I noticed the steely look in her eye, that look of determination and drive.  "No crashing in front of the TV today," it said.  Now, she didn't actually say anything, mind you.  She didn't have to.  It was all there in the look.

 

She has a great system.  She simply walks through the house, room by room, and gathers everything Christmas.  It all finds its way to the dining room table.  That is my cue to go up in the attic and haul down all the boxes.  Once she realizes what I am doing Chris races over to help.  I don't see what all the fuss is about.  Why not just push them over to the opening and let gravity take its course?  But no.  She is worried about scratches on the wood floor and silly little details like me hurting my neck or back.  She did the same thing when I went outside to take down the lights.  Scares her for me to be up on a ladder, I guess.  Better than when I used to just climb up on the roof and hang over.  Gotta love that woman.

 

We follow the same general procedure for taking down the tree.  Each ornament gets placed in a category pile: round dated balls, flat painted crafts, sewn or crocheted, chrismons, special or fragile ones that get to live in the closet instead of the attic.  It's a painstaking task that she has absolutely perfected over the years.  And of course each one has its own special little home.  Honestly, it doesn't take all that long, as long as I stay out of the way and leave the final resting places to her. 

 

Now, she did let me have the honor of rolling up the tree lights and taking down the tree itself.  We used to get a live tree, but after several years of Nathan allergy attacks, we finally switched to a very real looking artificial one.  And it served us well until Hurricane Ike.  The one we have now is pretty realistic, but it's not quite as good that first one was. This year I took the easy approach.  I started by pulling off the top unit and rolling up those lights.  Several years ago we started literally rolling the strands of lights up into balls.  Made it much easier to put the back on the next year.  Then I removed row after row of branches while rolling up the lights as I went along.  Made the whole process less of a chore. 

 

Now all that's left is putting all the boxes back up in the attic.  Chris is actually thinking we can do it on our own.  That means here we go, unless Nathan reads this before we get it done.  The race is on.

Isaiah 44:3 says, "For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants."

 

Father, will you do the same for my descendants?  They could sure use your Spirit.  Amen.