Things change. Time marches on. Time flies.

Yes, indeed. There’s never enough of time until we’re stuck in something we don’t like and then there’s too much of it. I’m convinced we just can’t get a good grasp on the concept of it, but we sure can feel powerless about it sometimes. This Christmas, my sweet man and I find ourselves at yet another milestone — this is the first time we find ourselves creating Christmas since no one was here to do the traditions with us. We’re not sad or sorry, I mean, we did it all from traveling for Christmas, to years of solid tradition with Santa’s bootprints in soot outside of the fireplace. Whoever wants to be here will be here for Eve and Day, but from getting the tree to decorating, we were on our own for the first time. Our last offspring was the tradition-keeper to the nTH degree and she just got married. So, this year, we decided rather than doing all the things we used to do with a tinge of sadness and lots of looking back, we’d bag the whole thing and start fresh.

We rode the snowmobile out together to choose a tree that we liked (and laughed pretty hard when we dumped ourselves into the snow). We chose all new ornaments from Amazon (not a themed tree — rather what did WE like?). We gave away all the sentimental ones that we didn’t really NEED to keep to our children. We didn’t put on the same music (Steven Curtis changed out for John Legend). We watched Christmas with the Kranks and related — hard. We let the grandbabies make us some garland to finish the whole thing off.

It was honestly very fun to have our Sunday-family day a few days later and invite everyone over to see our light-strewn home. And we sure did find that choosing to make the most of the stage in which we find ourselves sure beats looking back.

Sometimes, you can keep your chin up; other times you can’t and you need someone to remind you that the best can be yet to come if you make the choice.

I pray you all have the ability to keep your eyes forward and full of hope and vision for a beautiful *yet to come* this Christmas.

Are you in a stage of life you love? Do you have traditions you will keep forever no matter what? Did you find you had to change things up when you got your empty nest?