For two years now I’ve been planning a Christmas Tea.

I’ve got it all mapped out in my head. Lacy tablecloth. Girly cucumber sandwiches. Mulling spices filling the house. Classical Christmas music playing softly as the fireplaces glows, and lights twinkle, and my girls and their friends sip from china teacups with pinkies flared to the sky.

Wouldn’t it be lovely?

Wouldn’t it be so perfectly Pinterest?

Wouldn’t it be all things merry and bright?

It would. It truly would. The only problem is it hasn’t happened yet, not for two years running, and this year’s plans for a Christmas Tea aren’t looking good…

I have sugarplum dreams of being that mom. The mom who pulls of an epic tea party. The mom who bakes fantastic cookies and constructs an amazing gingerbread house. The mom who sews all her presents, crochets all her stockings, and has all the presents neatly wrapped and under the tree days before the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve.

But here’s what I’m learning: maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the mom I’m meant to be. And maybe, just maybe, that’s completely okay.

Because…

I am the mom who reads a Christmas Carol (or at least most of it) each and every year.

I’m the mom who watches A Little House on the Prairie Christmas with little girls snuggled close and tears in her eyes.

I’m the mom who is more than okay with messy wrapping paper and ornaments hung in funny places and Christmas carols clanging loud through the house.

Sometimes it feels like my kids are missing out on Christmas because of all my epic mom-fails, but what I discover a little more each year is that they aren’t missing out on a thing. What they truly need at Christmastime and all the year through isn’t a Pinterest perfect mom, what they truly need is me.

They need a mom who is comfortable being herself, not a mom who is constantly forcing, constantly trying to be someone she’s not, someone she wasn’t designed to be.

Christmas is all about giving, and motherhood is too. And one of my deepest desires as a mom is to give my girls the gift of beauty, to give them the gift of strength and peace and security with who they are.

The only way I can give them this gift is by modeling it myself. By giving myself permission and freedom to be who I am, to be the mom I was created to be, I’m showing my girls it’s okay to be themselves.

I’m offering beauty the best way I can. I’m offering strength, as I know how. I’m inviting them to live in a confidence and a peace with who I am, and with who they are, and together we’re learning that being ourselves is the best thing we can be.

Beautiful daughter. Beloved of God. Be who you are. It’s the very best gift you can give this world and all the ones you love.

At Christmastime (and all the time), ditch the sugarplum dreams for perfectly wonderful you.