I took off work early yesterday to put up Christmas lights. As you may have heard, I’m running a marathon this weekend. Aside from not wanting to be spending time climbing up and down a ladder, my parents-in-law are coming down from Oregon and I thought it would be nice to have the lights up for their visit. I couldn’t put them up last weekend because of another around-the-house project and I really wanted to have a good full December with lights this year. Seems like we’ve tended to get them up later than sooner in years past and I didn’t want to be sitting around being lazy and feeling guilty on Saturday.

So I pulled out the boxes and spread the lights out on the front yard. I read the “Merry Christmas” note I’d written to myself and tucked into the box of lights last year. I hooked up an extension cord and plugged each string in to test it before hanging them on the house and the front hedge. Got them all up as the day started to darken. Perfect timing. I hooked up some other cords in the garage and threw the switch. Half the lights around the eves of the house stayed dark. Approximately 4 strings have bad sections. Half the front of the house has bad lights. I stood in my front yard as the sun went down and decided I just didn’t want to deal with this whole mess. Half my lights were bad and I had half a plastic container of lights in the garage that had gone bad from previous years. And I’d tested everything before putting them up. All my preparation and forethought had turned to crap with the flip of a switch.

Over the last week I’ve run a handful of night runs and I’ve watched as the neighborhoods have started to glow brighter. I read Jeff’s post changing our attitudes toward gift giving and receiving. We’ve broken out our Christmas music and I’m reading and praying and just as I’m starting to get into the groove of the season everything seemed to get tossed upside down as I stared at the dark patches in my Christmas lights.

And I let that feeling of frustration carry me through the rest of the evening.

Today, looking back, it seems kind of silly, but I know it’s not. I know that more often than not I drive my little train right off the track for trivial reasons. I know the lights aren’t that important. I also know that they represent deeper frustrations about things I either haven’t completed or need to begin. Everything is incomplete and imperfect and sometimes that realization hits me square between the eyes and dazes me.

Oh well, I’ll get the lights finished on Saturday morning and I’ll continue to try and abide in that which is complete and perfect, especially during this crazy, frustrating, hurried blessed month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.