Normal is good. It’s comfortable and familiar.

Now that I’ve finally put away all of the Christmas decorations, our house is back to normal. Things are where they belong for 10 months of the year. We can now easily look out of our front window, without having to dance around the tree. Light switches operate lamps instead of Christmas lights. Little hands are no longer messing with ornaments. Rooms look bigger, because they are no longer filled with decorations. Things look as they did in the fall, and it’s like welcoming back an old friend. It’s good to get back to normal.

But normal can also be plain and boring.

Our house no longer sparkles. There’s no more soft glow from the Christmas lights. There are no more ornaments to look at, and remember special events and tell stories about their origin. There is less to make our home noticeably different from other houses, because one of the biggest thing that sets apart our home from others, for at least two months of the year, are our unique Christmas decorations. Things feel a little strange, like we don’t quite recognize the rooms anymore, and we’re meeting them for the first time. Getting back to normal can be a little unsettling and confusing.

This is our normal, it’s what we live with for the lion’s share of the year…but for the next few days, it’s a new normal, because it takes some work to get used to the way things are supposed to be, after we’ve lived with the way things sometimes are for a lengthy time!