December 19. How did it happen? A week before Christmas, and my office is barricaded by Amazon boxes. My kitchen would not pass a sanitation inspection. Shoes line our kitchen table. Coats and jackets are scattered everywhere but the closet. A mountain of “I-don’t-do-laundry-at-college” clothes waits for attention with a small white dog perched atop it, thinking he has scored a new bed for Christmas.

I can feel my dream of a peaceful, relaxing Christmas slipping away like a vortex of dirty bath water down the drain. I can even hear the gurgling. I think it is Satan mocking me. “She thought she had set herself up for a relaxing Christmas…all that early shopping and wrapping and mailing her cards before Thanksgiving…but I’ve got her now!”

That was the scene when I went to bed last night. But in the night last night, God whispered to me and I awoke suddenly. He said one word—Idol. I had read a devotional about idols by Ann Voskamp that morning (yes, I am three days behind).

Ann says: “They say that when you waver between two opinions, between two gods, the literal Hebrew word for wavering means sinking. It’s the wavering between the gods of things and the God of everything—that’s what has us flailing and drowning soundless in it all. We were made to worship—our internal circuitry wired to worship. Every moment you live, you live bowed to something. And if you don’t choose God, you’ll bow down before something else—some banal Baal…It’s always Baals that keep us from God, the Baals of work and agenda and accomplishment that keep us from prayer. We don’t pray enough only when we are practicing idol worship.” (from p. 148-149 of The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp)

When I read these words, I first thought of the idols in my everyday life—school, books, coffee, bargain hunting, and even family. But when I woke up, I knew immediately that God was not referring to any of these. I was on the verge of making the same mistake I have made so many Christmases before—striving for an external peace instead of an internal peace. Thinking I can create the perfect Christmas for my family when God has already done that.

And then, a list poured into my mind—nine people live in this four-bedroom house. This house is not only a home but a nursery to twins, an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a therapy center, and a college retreat center. I could clean; organize; and “catch up” on laundry, chores, and dishes all day long everyday, but it is highly unlikely that the peaceful, orderly, simple, clean home I envision would ever exist.

Yet, here I was nursing this picture in my mind of what our home would look like a week before Christmas. Because even though I said this year was going to be different because I would focus on the true meaning of Christmas, I have held onto this vision of Christmas I pursue every year—one that revolves around home, food, gifts, and traditions.

Idol. That’s what God named this. I have created a beautiful, peaceful, imaginary Christmas in my mind that is nothing but a shining idol, no different from the golden calf the Israelites created. And even though I have been deliberate about my pursuit of a different Advent experience this year, unless I shatter this idol, it is still going to draw me away from the God I really want to worship.

Dear God, Thank you. You literally woke me up from my dream. Now in response, I want to smash my idol of the perfect Christmas and replace it with a simpler, more realistic experience that fits the family You gave me. Help me identify the minimum, and accomplish that in time to truly savor next week—the days leading to Christmas.   But even while I pursue this peaceful external environment, let the peace of your Spirit be what I really seek.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, NIV)”