Thoughtful versus thoughts full… It’s the time of year where the pressure to be the former, makes me mostly just the latter. Which is the opposite of the intent of the season and I hate it. Gift-giving has never been my strength, or my love language, or my preference. It stresses me out. I give so much thought to TRYING to be thoughtful, and then end up with silly or crappy presents (or no presents at all) because I can’t find the right thing. Rather than coming across as thoughtful, I’m just a brain of thoughts full. It’s depressing.

This weekend, I had an epiphany. At the children’s Christmas Pageant dress rehearsal last week the adorable Inn Keeper made a mistake. She checked the townspeople into their rooms, and then when Joseph and Mary came for a room she accidentally said, “right this way.”
LOL. If the story went like that, what in the world would we dress all the cute little babies in so that they could be part of the play?

As most of us know, the Christmas story doesn’t go like that… in fact there was NO ROOM at the Inn, which is why Mary had her baby in a barn.

This ‘mistake’ at the rehearsal, that there was room, got me questioning whether I leave room for the right stuff this time of year (and every time of year, actually). Do I leave room for the good stuff? For the stuff that matters? Stuff like loving God and loving people in languages I know and not the ones (gift-giving, ahhh!) that are forced upon me at Christmastime.

“No Room at the Inn.”

I’m pretty sure that just because that’s how the story went on the first Christmas, it’s not how the story has to go from there on out. This next week I’m going to try to be less thoughts FULL, and more thoughtful, in ways that are authentic to me. Because I think our pageant Inn Keeper was onto something. I’d like to rewrite my story so that the line is, “Right this way, Jesus. You can rest here, Love. The Inn might be full, but there’s room in my heart.”