This Year I Bought the Wrong-Sized Tree (And Somehow Got Exactly What I Needed)

This year I ordered a new Christmas tree. Two reasons:

1. I didn’t like my old one.
2. After the year we’ve had, I wanted something easy to assemble.

Done and done…or so I thought.

When I was online shopping, I could not remember how tall our ceilings are. Not a clue. So, using highly advanced Girl Math™, I looked at Mike standing in the living room and decided our ceilings were roughly one and a half Mikes tall. Mike is 6’2”, so clearly, CLEARLY, our ceilings are about 10 feet.

Naturally, I ordered a beautifully lit, FULL, pre-lit 9-foot tree that flips, locks, and just needs the top added. Easiest assembly ever.

Except…y’all.

This thing is MASSIVE.

It takes up half the dang living room.

It literally touches the ceiling (obviously no room for the angel).

Once we had put that tree down, flipped it, and reversed it, I stood back, giggling like an idiot, and said, “Little full. Lotta sap. Looks GREAT,” because it is giving full Griswold energy.

And then came the fluffing.

I completely underestimated how long it would take to fluff a 9-foot, fully packed tree. After two nights, several glasses of bubbly, and one moment where I contemplated just yeeting the whole thing into the yard, I knew I needed reinforcements. So I enlisted Mom and Cole to help. (They’ll say I voluntold them. Tomato, tomahto.)

Standing here this morning, coffee in hand, admiring the fruits of our labor with this tree from the seventh circle of Hobby Lobby hell, I felt something deeper tug at me. And today, the 25th anniversary of my daddy’s passing, it hit me:

My life for the last eight months has felt a lot like this tree.

A beast.

Too big.

Too much.

A lot of sap.

But with a whole lotta coffee, a little bit of sass, some questionable language, and a whole heck of a lot of love from our people…we’ve managed to fluff it out. Shape it. Light it. Stand it up. Make it beautiful.

We’ve lived through things we never asked for: loss, chemo, grief layered on grief…but somehow also found moments to live in spite of it all. To choose joy anyway. To create it when it didn’t show up on its own.

And that’s the lesson this ridiculous tree gave me:

Life is short. Live now. Live loudly. Live fully. Even when the branches feel heavy, and you’re three glasses of bubbly deep questioning your life choices and your ceiling height math.

She’s a beaut!!