Good morning my worthy beauties. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in Woodland, California. I’m laying on my couch in my bathrobe watching Sex and the City, scrolling Instagram. I came across a ton of bloggers pages this morning. They are all showcasing how wonderfully they’ve decorated for the Holidays. Their trees are absolutely stunning. They have picturesque fireplaces with perfectly hung stockings. They have garland wrapped around their staircases and flawlessly wrapped presents under the tree, demonstrating names like Chanel and Dior. Gosh, everything is so beautiful.

I find myself scanning my living room. I’ve got a tree that I purchased seven years ago with old school colored lights. After I took a longer look at the tree, I noticed that my ornament placement generated quite a few gaps and not all of the lights are working. The ornaments are ones that I grew up putting on my Christmas tree as a child. My mom brought all of them over to get them out of her garage a couple of weeks ago. I tried to hang stockings on my tv console because we don’t have a fireplace. My dog, Sadie likes to take them down everyday because she thinks they’re toys. So currently, they’re in a pile underneath the television. I’ll get around to hanging them back up. I don’t have a single present underneath the tree because I am a last-minute Christmas shopper…always have been.

As I scanned my space, I started allowing comparison to overcome the joy that I had the night I put my old school tree up. “You could have tried a little harder, Alex” “You definitely should have bought the flocked tree.” “You saw that beautiful tree skirt at Target, why didn’t you get it? You used that old blanket that you love, instead?”

I had to stop myself. I loved every minute of putting up that old tree. This was my first time decorating my own home for the holidays. I loved pulling every single ornament out of that dusty box from my mom’s garage. It reminded me of Christmas growing up – how my brother and I would take turns pulling the same ornaments out of the same box. I love this old blanket that I used for the tree skirt. I bought this blanket when I was 14 years old and I’ve kept it ever since. It was the first purchase I made with my own money from my first job working at a little pizza parlor in Oregon. That memory allows me to have gratitude for hard work, even as a 14 year old kid, I took a lot of pride in that purchase.

The instagram worthy moments that you see are beautiful moments from the lives of people that you don’t even know. They’re beautiful, but that’s their life. Don’t allow comparison to steal your joy. Don’t allow it to steal your pride. Don’t allow it to steal your gratitude for the goodness that God has blessed you with.

This is just what Christmas looks like in the Jensen household this year. It’s not perfect; it probably never will be. But that’s so worthy of being celebrated.

Remember always – YOU ARE WORTHY.