“When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do and with it the quality of your life increases dramatically.”

Eckhart Tolle

Christmas is here. This year, it seems like it came a bit earlier. It is always strange to celebrate Christmas in tropical climates. The first 13 years of my life in the United States were spent in cold climates. Spokane, Washington. Philadelphia. East Lansing and Mount Clemens, Michigan. Then I moved to Arizona. Walking in the stores to hear ‘Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful’, looking at the models in the shops all bundled up in Ski clothes, as you pass the palm trees that are decorated with lights feels like an out of body experience.

After living in Arizona for 5 years, I sort of got used to the bizarre idea of having a fully decorated tree inside while it’s 80 degrees outside. I can’t say that I ever really liked it. We always made it to the colder weather that time of the year. Either skiing in Tahoe when we later moved to California, or visiting my sister back in Eastern Washington.

This year with COVID we are staying put in Hawaii. No white Christmas for us.

But because of doom and gloom, I have noticed that neighbors started putting up their trees and lights a bit early this year. Not the Thanksgiving weekend, which I understood to be tradition. So when this Thanksgiving weekend rolled in, half of the homes on our street were already decorated. My girls were persistent:

Mom, when are you putting up the tree?

It has always been my thing. Once my husband takes the tree out of the storage, I do everything: the lights and all the decorations with precision. I know where the icicles would go. Where the crystal snowflakes will hide. The pine cone that is from my best friend’s mom’s house with the lace from her wedding veil. The one that is a pottery piece of all our pinkies’ print as the shape of 4 dangling pine cones from when my baby was 2.5 months old. All the ones they made as little kids. All the travel ones we purchased as a family.

All my doing.

This year I was busy. 2020 was a year of tremendous creativity for me. I started a podcast. I started this blog. I started a supportive group for physicians. On top of all that, I started a coaching group as well as one on one coaching program to help us all live a more intentional life. I am making workbooks, video lessons, and curriculum. So much fun.

I was working on my content after my birthday cake when the girls asked me to put up the tree right there and then.

I looked at them and said, “Honey, you are welcome to do it yourself if you like.”

They could not contain themselves. Jumping out of their own skins.

So while I finished my work about a couple of hours later, I peaked in to see the tree.

With no help from me at all.

First realization, the lights that were threaded through the tree were two different colors. Yep. The yellow lights you see all the time, and apparently the addition of new strings of lights that were LED lights. These things look like the flashlight feature on your iphone. So bright, it’s almost dizzying.

My husband and my girls were looking back at me. Like an excited puppy.

I saw all the areas that were over decorated and the areas that had asymmetry. Too many gold pieces together and too many red pieces clustered up. The lights were uneven in terms of their distribution and uneven because they are literally two different lights.

The old me would have just jumped in to fix it all.

The new me looked at those beautiful faces. My loving family was looking back at me. My sweet husband who after a long day at work still manages to make time to drag a tree out of the musty storage up to the house for the joy of his girls. My girls who could not contain their excitement and pride that they got to do the whole tree by themselves. To be trusted to handle all the fragile ones I bought on my sister’s 40th birthday trip to Paris. They were beaming with pride.

The new me ate it all up.

How lucky am I? How can I have a family that is this loving and this caring? How am I to receive this love?

Without judgment. Without making it better.

My imperfect tree is perfect. I wake up in the morning and have a cup of coffee. That’s my time to write in my journal. I Look at the uneven tree and the bald spots and am reminded of the love that put the tree together.

One day, my girls will be away to college and my husband really could take the tree or leave it.

But this day, I am grateful to start to jump into the joy of this holiday season. The time and space where I am surrounded with love.

In the imperfect world, we must receive love perfectly.

Otherwise, we are selling ourselves short every time.

How would you rather show up in your life?

With so much love and Aloha to you all.