Well…it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it.

SOOOOO many people pour into my kids’ lives on a daily basis—care attendants, therapists, doctors, tutors, coaches, baristas (catch that pun?!)—and on a very limited single-mom budget, I wanted to do something small but meaningful for Christmas to let these people know how much we value them. So I did what any modern mom would do. I went straight to Pinterest to get ideas and then to Amazon to order supplies. They came in yesterday, and I eagerly set Titus and Lydia up at the table with the colorful paints and pristine brushes and the pretty little wooden ornaments that I simply wanted them to paint in some kind of colorful, abstract-artsy way. Then I would add a few special touches to make the ornaments a little more meaningful for the recipients, and Voilà!

Let’s just say that Titus and Lydia did not catch my vision of colorful and abstract-artsy. We have solid brown, solid blue, solid maroonish, a lighter shade of solid brown, solid mauve, a darker shade of solid blue that is only partially painted, and–look!–one two-tone bluish earth-looking one that suddenly seems like a masterpiece!

I pondered calling this a “practice batch,” pitching it, and starting over next week. But then I thought about the motivation behind that. These are people who help me care for my kids in the most real way possible. They understand the day-to-day work of helping children with extra challenges be the best they can possibly be. They see the underside of our lives—the hard and dirty and smelly (literally) parts—and they love us anyway, maybe even because of those parts. So who would I be trying to impress if I pitched the first batch and tried again next week?!?

If these ornaments aren’t colorful and pretty enough to give as gifts, does that mean that Tess’s debut vocal performance at Bible Study on Thursday when she kicked her foot to the beat and then shouted out the last word of each of the songs just as the other children finished singing them was “less than”?

Does that mean that when Lydia performs with the Children’s Christmas Choir next weekend, and her rendition of “Happy Birthday, Jesus” isn’t quite on key and is missing quite a few words, it will be “inferior”?

Shame on me for even feeling momentarily disappointed in these precious ornaments! They are as valuable as the most expensive, exquisite ornament I could buy at Tiffany’s. They are like the widow’s two-cents or the boy’s loaves and fish. They are like my pitiful attempts at singing worship songs on key and my suddenly shrunken tithe. Because doesn’t God honor all of our heartfelt offerings even if they are but filthy rags? (Isaiah 64:6) When our voices reach heaven, don’t they blend with the angels’ voices, no matter how bad they sound down here on earth? And when we stand before the throne, doesn’t He see our dirty, sinful, broken selves as righteous because He sees us through Christ?

These ornaments are beautiful because they were made and will be given by children who love with the purest of loves—a love without pretense or pressure or condition—a bubbling over, can’t-hold-it-in kind of love that melts your heart and dissolves your stress and makes you get up in the morning when you don’t really feel like it.  The same kind of love that birthed the baby whose life we celebrate on Christmas Day.

So I am keeping this first batch of ornaments and whichever masterpieces are produced in the next several sittings (because at the rate Titus and Lydia lose interest in painting, it will take us until next year to finish painting all of them!).

And if I know the people they were made for like I think I do…they will be well received.

“For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

 (Masterpieces created by Titus and Lydia Barnes.)