A season of unwrapping and untangling

It is a time, Christmas, where in the natural, we are wrapping up presents, untangling lights and trim. Hanging up cheer, spreading joyful expectation like garland. It’s chaotic and lovely, lively and a bit maddening, all at once.
There is even more emotion than decoration- and that’s saying a lot. Even as we bustle and hustle, tying up loose ends with hands and plans. in our hearts and spirits, there is a different invitation.

To unwrap.

See, we use ropes and ribbon, purse strings, heart strings, all year round. We tie and bind, cut and loose, based on emotions and feedback. We trim and let go based on performance or lack thereof.
We use earthly bindings and chords and associations to tie us to what we like or what we think or what we think we want. Those have limitations all their own, though. Too harsh, too loose, too narrow sighted. Not strong enough, too entirely suffocating.

FREE THE GIFTS

In a season of wrapping and ribbons, remember what the real gifts are. Time, no matter how it’s spent. Love, no matter what it looks like. Service, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel. People, real live gifts, that aren’t meant to be tied like packages, tamed according to our opinions, tangled up in what we think. We aren’t meant to be either.

When you give a gift this season, anytime really, let it be one of less pressure. Less pressure for the recipient to perform or provide back for you a certain way or with a certain response. Untangle people from needing to give you what it is you want.

Cut the chord, and see your dissatisfaction fall to the wayside. Like a ribbon that’s been cut, freeing the actual gift. You thought your hopes and dreams came tied up with the ribbons and wrappings of expectation. You realize now that those ribbons were only holding it down. Your expectation of what made something beautiful was only holding it back, holding back the gift.

When we take the pressure off the wrappings, we better enjoy the presents. We are meant to have a more heavenly attachment, anyway. One which supplies, satisfies and supersedes any earthly one.

This is a season of untangling and uniting.
Untangling old ties, breaking broken records, tossing out old tethers, forgetting opinions, even if they were yours.
Where we’ve allowed what other people think to be more important than what God thinks. Where we allowed what we think to be more important than what God thinks. When we got caught up in all of the ribbons and bows.

There is a better way.

I used to be a great wrapper. I even did it professionally for a season. Long after that foray, I would buy the best paper the day after Christmas at a local boutique. I would dress the next years presents in all of the best colors, matching these, pretty tags and bows.

Now I’m grateful if I get it all wrapped in time, labeled with a pen and maybe slapped with a bow, just hoping to keep Santa’s paper straight. I could feel guilt for the lack of lovely. But I firmly and decidedly do not. I will not be guilted by last decades priorities. I will not spend extra time wrapping up presents, not when I’m so busy really enjoying them.

I’m in a season not only of not just wrapping up gifts, but untangling them. The pressure is not on presenting or wrapping up the gifts to look a certain way. The focus is instead, on taking the pressure off. And enjoying it more.

It is also most importantly. a time and season- and forever may it remain- for attaching myself more to Him, and less to other things. Less to earthly expectations or any man’s opinion, including my own. To enjoy the earthly gifts He’s given, to unwrap them and free them, while still placing in Him only my Hope and expectation. To search for the Heavenly gifts, uncover them, and be less concerned with earthly ones.

When you care less for ribbons and bows, what people say and think, and attach yourself more to Him, you free your whole self from earthly pressures and entanglements. You become more tied nto heavily ties. The kind that free you to fly, more loose than you imagined, more safely held than any man made structure.

Take the pressure off your earth relationships.
Lean on your Heavenly one.

Be entangled to Him.
HE will work out what needs to be. He will untangle out hearts from unmet unseen unknown unrealized expectations. Untethered,
HE will binds us together in PERFECT unity. When Christ means more, Christ means everything.

Be free to be bound, only to the most perfect gift. Him. Then you can enjoy all that He has to give.