a Christmas story

For some reason I never really got into Christmas. Its always been the highlight of my year and I just let it hurry on past. I went through all the motions and filled my holidays with the usual. I decorated my house, bought everyone gifts, made yummy treats, attended family parties, serenaded myself to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers Christmas album in the privacy of my car, you know, the usual and expected.
But doing all those things never really got me in the Christmas spirit.
I found this picture of a nativity my beehive girls painted to deliver to a family in our ward. Baby Jesus has a green face and is lying in a shoe box, the camel looks like he is going to rob the gas station tonight, and the angel looks more like a drag queen then an angel. When they were painting them one Tuesday night, I was silently going crazy in my head because my perfectionist brain was saying Baby Jesus doesn't have a green face and angles need to look heavenly. I wanted to jump right in and save these poor guys, but I restrained and kept telling myself I could fix it later.
I brought them all home and sat down to do damage control, but I just sat because I realized there was nothing to fix and I would have made a bigger mess then what was created. I took this picture because I couldn't stop myself from laughing after looking at them for so long. Not really being in the Christmas spirit I tried to arrange them in a basket of straw as perfectly as I could and couldn't wait to get rid of them.
The night we delivered them, we all got in the car and drove to the house we were taking them to. The girls ran to the door and rang the bell and I slowly followed behind, we were greeted with two small children excited for visitors. All ten of us crammed into the tiny living room and presented our gift from the Beehive class to this poor family. The little girl gasped with excitement because she "didn't have one of these". She went straight for the Baby Jesus and like she was holding a doll said, "how cute".
I didn't realize it then but after looking back on my Christmas season it doesn't matter what we think Baby Jesus should look like, it only matters that we know Him. These last couple of weeks I have tried to count my blessings more deeply and cherish the simple things in life. The Savior should be the reason for every season and not just Christmas time. A blog is not hardly the place to share a testimony but I hope everyone can keep the spirit of our Heavenly Father close because its the only thing that can truly make us happy and the only way we can be perfect. Try as we might, we can't accomplish great things and become great without our Savior. This I know is true, more then ever.