Retrospective Lily

What breaks up the monotony of life for you?

Three answers that immediately come to my mind are celebrating the season, creating art, and keeping houseplants.

‘Tis the season for bright lights and bright eyes

In childhood, each passing year feels monumental. Every Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer, etc. is significant. Maybe it’s because you are growing, learning, and changing so much from year to year, or maybe it’s because you haven’t been alive long enough to get bored or jaded from a monotonous existence. The older I get, the faster time flies – and I must exert more effort to make life special, magical.

As I write this in mid-December, I see frost on the grass outside my window. We had our first snow of the season last week. Baby, it’s cold outside! And even inside (though I’m grateful for space heaters and fuzzy Crocs).

Christmas is coming full speed ahead, and I’m feeling the holiday spirit. The house is decorated with two small Christmas trees, a nativity scene, and some wintery knick-knacks. I’ve also watched a few Christmas movies like Elf, Fred Claus, Jingle All the Way, The Santa Clause and Christmas with the Kranks. (The last one had poor critical reception, but I love it nonetheless.) I’ve been listening to the local radio station that only plays Christmas music every December. I even ate a McDonald’s Grinch meal – and I’ve got the socks to prove it!

Member of the Alive Poets Society

Ironically, some people become more whimsical with age. It’s liberating to lean into your inner child and let your imagination run rampant. (An enlightened, refreshing viewpoint or a positive spin on arrested development?)

I’ve been writing a lot lately. I keep my phone handy for when inspiration strikes and I need to jot down my fleeting thoughts before they fly in one ear and out the other.

There is magic in the air

Poetry and beauty everywhere

Many in this world are blind

But those who seek shall find

Having a disability (Friedreich’s Ataxia) makes it tough to get out of bed to use the bathroom at night. It is 10x worse in the winter. When I take off the covers, coldness invades my skin, my muscles, my bones. I dread it, especially when I consider that I will have to do it about 100 more times before spring comes around. Talk about monotony.

But, funny enough, my creative senses are heightened in the middle of the night. If I focus my thoughts on a poem, or a song, or a potential blog post, I (sort of) stop thinking about how miserable the cold is. Sometimes my best ideas come to me at 3 a.m. Once I return to the warm bed, I groggily grope around on the nightstand for my phone to type a few words that will later trigger my memory.

The benefits of plant parenthood

Let’s just say that I have a few houseplants. It’s fun to watch new leaves unfurl as the plants grow slowly but surely. I also enjoy propagating them to create new babies.

I love how adding a new plant to a boring space in your home really jazzes it up. Obviously propagating is more budget-friendly than shopping, but sometimes, I gotta splurge! Last week at Lowe’s, I bought myself a gorgeous lemon-lime maranta (prayer plant). Who needs Santa if you have a credit card? FYI, the specimen I got is 3-4x bigger than the one pictured here. It’s currently hanging from a hook on my bathroom door. I get a boost of serotonin every time I see it.

Fun fact: A red maranta was my first-ever houseplant. It basically served as my gateway drug into jungle fever. (Sadly, it died eventually. Marantas aren’t difficult per se, but they are a little finicky and very thirsty. At the moment, I have one other prayer plant, a rabbit’s foot maranta that I got several years ago.)

~

I hope you have a fun, festive, magical holiday season filled with joy, gratitude, and love. After that, I hope spring gets here before my permanently-frozen feet fall off.

Bonus: Here is a poem I wrote called The Crooked Star.

Each year at Christmastime

We put up a giant tree

It’s a fun activity

Meant for the whole family –

Connecting the pieces like a snowman’s body

Fluffing out branches to look full and luscious

But without a doubt, the best part is

Hanging up ornaments so precious –

Christmons tell the story of the Christian faith

Handmade with beads gold and white

Inspirational, educational, and beautiful 

Twinkling and gleaming in the light –

We all get to decorating

The bottom branches are soon weighed down

Tiny toddler hands reach as high as they can

But some of the kids are bigger now

So the tree’s midsection gets adorned

And a few adults (the biggest kids of all) 

Try to reach the highest branches;

It’s tough when the tree is SO tall!

~

This year, a pre-teen climbed the ladder

To place a star on the tippy top

And though it didn’t really matter

I noticed the star was CROOKED

As I gaze at it week after week

I’m beginning to see it as a symbol

Hope and redemption for imperfect humanity

Salvation for sinners who are humble

Faith and life are messy

I’m not perfect and I never will be

But God still loves me

In fact, He still uses me

~

Sometimes, things happen for a reason 

So God bless that crooked star on the tree!

What an awesome reminder this holiday season:

There is grace for broken people like me!