There’s a typo in my Christmas letter. There’s also a font size problem, and while I could easily blame the Snapfish design software for making it extraordinarily difficult to edit, I have to not just take the blame but own it. I realize my blog has typos more often than not, things I catch hours, days or sometimes even years after I originally post, but the Christmas card is a more sacred production to me. I’ve gone to such lengths each year that I keep expecting my family to stage a Christmas-letter intervention.

James, knowing how deeply the typo was going to stress me, quickly suggested I reorder them. And I’ll admit, the suggestion gave me pause. I had time. No one would be the wiser. And the teacher-voice in my head that reminds me, like I remind my students, not to just double-check but triple- and quadruple- check important things, could at least be muted for now.

But I just couldn’t.

I could blame the error on 2020, the year of all-things-going-amok. I could commend my own laissez-faire attitude suggesting that taking a step back from perfectionism isn’t always a bad thing. I could even explain it away as the perfect culmination of my year of being so far less than perfect – a year when I haven’t felt like the best teacher, the best friend, the best mom or the best wife – a Christmas card that is not my best seems perfectly fitting.

But I just can’t.

The typo feels like the exact lesson I needed right now. You might say I’m overthinking this, but, when my Christmas letter itself is about lessons learned from my chickens, it seems appropriate that I think of them when it comes to this typo.

You see, I have a chicken who keeps laying her eggs on the ground. She can’t even get motivated enough to jump up on the stool, to hop in to the spacious, clean, dark nesting boxes in the coop. She just lays it wherever she may be. I have other chickens who haven’t laid in a month because they are molting. The loss of feather is so minimal you don’t even really notice by looking at them, but obviously something significant is going on inside that requires all their energy (and protein) and egg laying just isn’t going to happen right now. And I have an entire flock that is so baffled by the light that stays on later in the coop that they keep getting themselves shut out at night. Sigh. The truth is, it’s hard to be a chicken sometimes. And sometimes, it’s hard to be a human.

So, the typo is my lesson in perspective. It’s my reminder that sending out an imperfect Christmas card is not the end of the world, not even close. It’s my reminder, too that sometimes we need to just give ourselves a break, to ease up on perfectionism and breathe – or molt, or lay the egg right here in the pine shavings – whatever works for now.

So, while you read my letter and you notice the typo, and the font that changes sizes from the top of the card to the bottom, and all the other little things I should have fixed, or noticed, or spent more time on, just know that I’m giving myself a break. The lesson from this typo has given me a much better perspective – the perspective to see that the money I would have spent (happily, easily, gratefully) reprinting the cards, is put to far better use giving someone else a break – someone who needs it much more than I do. So, with the money I saved, I’m giving a couple flocks of chickens to people who need them more than I ever well. Thanks to Heifer International, this lesson, this perspective, this typo, has now blessed others – a blessed little thing, indeed.