When Things Go Wrong

Last week I decorated the mantle. It was a little early but what the heck, lights and colours and shine are always lovely. And besides, this is the first year in a few years that I am home to actually decorate for Christmas.

So you can see in the picture above how lovely the foliage was. and how much I love colour at Christmas.

This week, the decorations were beginning to fall off. The branches were drooping. The needles were dropping. It was beginning to be an ugly mess. From beauty to mess in one small weeks time.

This is a bit like life. Any bit of life. Certainly like leadership. A lot like projects of all shapes and sizes. Difficulty, trouble, even failure.

It’s the name of the game a lot of the time. Things will go wrong. Plans will not play out like we expected. Go-overs are normal.

So, I’ve redone the mantle. I took it all apart and by the time I had taken the decoration off of the branches there were no branches left, only sad little twigs with heaps and heaps of needles everywhere else!!

Now, I love real greenery. The drape of those hemlock branches were just beautiful. All the reproduction in the world cannot truly mirror what real branches look like.

So, my plans are a little tweaked. The mantle still looks okay. And to be sure I am glad for fake greenery. But I couldn’t add in my angels or candle holders as well as a few of the decorations.

And some things just work out this way. Disappointments are common. Not everything comes out exactly the way we thought it would. In fact, most anything rarely comes out the way we thought it would.

And we must have resilience for this. We must.

Things will not go the way we think they will. Even the best of things are rarely as previously envisioned.

We adjust. Lean in. Enjoy nonetheless. Acknowledge the beauty still present. Finding joy in the surprises of life.

p.s. I tried taking a picture of the new mantle but now my camera card is not working. time to lean into that!