About four or five years ago, Steven and I jumped on the artificial tree bandwagon. After numerous years of our children dining on the fine tastings of leftover tree needles, we felt it a wise decision. Since we were going artificial we went all out and purchased a pre-lit tree.
It is quite beautiful and super easy to put together. Even easier to disassemble. It has made our Christmas decorating quicker. Until this year.
This past weekend Steven dragged the tree out of the attic and we put it together. We started this little project around 7:00pm and the kids were anxiously awaiting the moment they would get to decorate the tree. We figured it was a Saturday night and the kids could stay up a little later. It wouldn't take too long to let them decorate a bit, and we could have them in bed by 9:00.
That would have been in a perfect world. Instead, we put the tree together and found that our tree had a nice little pattern going on. The pattern went like this...lights, no lights, lights, no lights, lights, no lights. Wonderful. Great. Dandy. Steven and I were so frustrated. Eventually, we told the kids we would have to figure it out in the morning. They were bummed, but understood.
As we were putting Little Man to bed and he was saying his bedtime prayers, he prayed for our tree's lights to work. He loves Christmas time and all the decorations. This was super important to him. It made me pretty sad.
After the kids were in bed I got a little angry. We spent our hard earned money on this tree and I felt like this was an attack on our finances. So Steven and I prayed too. About a Christmas tree. Yes, I realize how crazy that sounds. BUT, guess what? It worked.
The next morning Steven and I decided there had to be short somewhere since there was such a distinct pattern. We wiggled almost every bulb in the sections that were out. Doing so allowed us to fix the problem. Was it time consuming? Yes. Was it tedious? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.
I thought about how easy it would have been to just chunk the tree and go purchase a new one. It would have been the easiest of the two options. However, it would have also been us spending an minimum of $100 on a new tree. Instead, we problem solved and saved ourselves our hard earned money. It was the right thing to do for us.
My life lesson is this...
Life has one guarantee. There will be problems. Lots of them. We can either take the time to fix them, or sweep them under the rug. Fixing them is much more satisfying. 
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