Wear shoes on your feet which are the Good News of peace.
Carefully, I removed a shiny blue bulb from a paper
carton and placed it on a welcome branch. My reflection bounced back at me, and
my breath caught in my throat. At age 10, I couldn’t quite put into words the
reverence for the Christmas season, but I felt it in my heart—a warmth that
radiated from the surrounding family members, all engaged in preparing for a Savior’s
birth.
I was the oldest of my parents’ (then) five children, and
true to birth order traits, I became an achiever and a perfectionist. To me,
Christmas was the most perfect season and everything about Christmas had to be
done with perfection. That included decorating the tree, under Mom’s careful
supervision. Ornaments had to be perfectly placed, evenly spaced, and no same
colors next to one another. The angel had to top the tree, and tinsel had to be
draped perfectly over the ends of every extended bough. Once decorating was
complete, all could exhale a simultaneous “Aaahhh.”
That’s what we were doing that afternoon on December 18,
1971. All of us—my siblings, my parents, my grandfather, and myself—were
sitting around the living room admiring the Christmas tree. A beautiful moment
to be frozen in time.
“A pretty tree,” Granddaddy remarked in a whisper, not
for effect but because his vocal chords had been affected by a stroke.
Yes,
it’s perfect, I thought. Then I glanced down at my shoes and
noted that not all was perfect. My shoes were worn out, my toes scrunched
inside. I couldn’t wear these on Christmas. I had to have new shoes, and I had
to convince my parents to take me shopping.
