Merry Christmas (what???)

Yes - that says Merry Christmas. Yes - it's August 16. What exactly does that mean?

It means I'm off today to slect the Christmas program for the youth choir at our church. Seems crazy but we start these preparations right after school starts. We will have 21 hour long practices between now and the performance. I will have many more hours getting props and costumes and backdrops ready.

Backdrops are a personal favorite project of mine. (Don't tell anyone but I love to prepare them.) It is an opportunity to color on a large scale. We use roll canvas fabric and an over head projector to trace the outlines then paint with acrylic and latex paints. Spread on the floor - we crawl around and paint. Then we hang them from shower curtain rings on a wire system on our stage. The one above is from last years play and its one of my favorites. If you enlarge it you can see the lizard and the frog.

As I was thinking about this, the nightmare night from last year came back to mind. I was tired- I work 40+ hours a week and then this at night. I had been painting for weeks it seemed and on this night I had to drag the paintings off the stage and onto the floor to work. This is in our new Family Life Center and a class had put them up for me earlier in the week. What I did not notice when I dragged one to the floor was that the protective plastic was no longer underneath. I painted for about 2 hours on it and then was starting to clean up. That's when I found the mess. No protection - paint bleeding through to a newly waxed floor - 10:30 at night - 6 ft x 8 ft area. You know the immediate response - TEARS - HYSTERICAL SOBBING UGLY TEARS - as I crawled around and cleaned up the floor for 3 hours to get all that paint up. I could have waited for help, I could have left it for someone else, but no, I just cried and cleaned.

Was there a lesson in that (other than always make sure to protect the floor)? In retrospect, I learned something about how to handle things. Okay, go ahead and cry, go ahead and have your pity party, stomp, throw things, scream, whatever your method. THEN just get on with it. Those tears did not do one thing to help with the clean up. I still had to deal with the mess. I could not hide from what had to be done. Life is that way. Things happen - bad decisions are made - there's a mess to deal with - and as much as we want to, we cannot hide from dealing with it and we may need help, but we need to act while we wait for help to arrive. So yes there was a lesson in the disaster.

Is there something simple like this that you have learned profound lessons from? Please share.

Day 16 of using what I have. I did buy the Somerset Home book last night. It was worth every cent I paid.

I do hope you all have a beautiful day. I know that preparing for Christ's birthday will help enhance my joy today.