Well, it’s almost Christmas. At this point, most of the presents are wrapped, I’ve stopped freaking out about my to do list and I’ve pretty much settled in to being *off*. I’ve even written 9 of 15 chapters of my book. (Squeal! September release!) Last night, I sat down to peek in on our customer service inbox to see if anyone had questions about orders arriving before the big day. We had a handful, so I answered those and sat for a minute. Our warehouse has been INUNDATED (how many exclamation points can I put here !!!!!!!!) with orders this year. Tracking has been weird, shipping companies have been overwhelmed and our warehouse shipping friends have been working through the night (we sent 25 pizzas, hugs and a million thanks!).
But somehow, in the middle of the madness, things haven’t really been super crazy other than a few hiccups. This is the first relatively calm holiday season our company has ever had. After six holiday seasons and a lot of falling on our faces, we’re pretty happy to have some tried and true systems in place. I suddenly felt this enormous amount of gratitude that I jumped off the ledge with this company / idea seven years ago. We shipped out of my house and toddler Brady pressed yay stickers onto every box. (Read the story of the how the Simplified Planner came to be here). THAT was bananas. Boxes covered every inch of my house one Christmas.
So, this Christmas, though I’m unendingly grateful for all the goodness this year has brought, I feel really grateful for the hard things (infertility) and the hard work (bootstrapping a debt free company for seven years). This year, we added twins to our family. But had we not suffered the pain of infertility, we may have never have had Caroline and Tyler. Our company doubled in size and some days were really, really hard as we added three new (incredible!) team members, but we had a record breaking year and grew even closer to our core mission to help women make what matters happen. I’m so grateful for that hard stuff.
My prayer for next year as I write this last coffee break email of 2016 is that I will be refined through the journey and filled with gratitude in the reflection. Wishing you and yours a very merry Christmas.