A Christmas Story
A True Story
My Story
December 1996
THE GIFT
Our Christmas celebration would be different this year. Last Christmas was too. It had always been our custom to worship together as a family on Christmas Eve, then exchange gifts when we returned home from church, and then sometimes rush back into town to attend a midnight service. On Christmas Day we would all go to my parents' home for Christmas Dinner and to exchange gifts with my brother's family. But this year it appeared Jack and I would be celebrating Christmas alone for the first time in our lives.
Last year, 1995, was hard, because in October, our youngest son, Joel, had chosen to leave this world for heaven. All of our other children arranged to be home that year. Even our daughter, Jenny, who was going to school in Japan, had managed to come back home for Christmas. It was a tearful but close time for us as a family; and as I look back, I think we were still all in shock, and not really feeling the full impact of what we had experienced, but still our traditional way of celebrating Christ's birth had continued.
But, for Christmas 1996, Jenny would not be coming home from Japan. She had just returned in October, from being home for the summer, and would be working as a volunteer youth missionary there with the Lutheran Church for the next two and one-half years, and money was not in abundance. Julie, who was an anchor and reporter for WHAS TV in Louisville, Kentucky, was going to have to work on Christmas Eve, so she was not coming home either. Jeff would be spending Christmas Eve with his girl friend's family. So...this year was definitely going to be different!
Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Julie called and said she would be able to come home the weekend before Christmas; so I made arrangements for my parents, and nephew Dennis, and for Jeff and his girl friend to come for dinner on that Saturday, so we could at least spend the day together and exchange gifts. It had been a long time since I had prepared a meal and used the good china and silver. Usually it had been used for something special, like a graduation or confirmation. For close family, we kept things simple. But that Saturday, I decided to make it as special as I could. So I started getting the dishes, etc., from out of the drysink where I kept them. They definitely needed to be washed.
While I was sorting through, trying to decide what I would need, I came across a Christmas ornament that had somehow not been put away with the rest of the ornaments some year in the past. It was one that Jenny had given to me. It was entitled "JOY", and pictured the baby Jesus in a manger. I placed the ornament in a special place on our tree. Only once before had Jenny not been home for Christmas. She had this love for Japan and its people and had lived there every year but one since her graduation from college. I missed her, but I also learned she was only a phone call away.
A little later, I came across a little wooden airplane that Jeff had made when he was in grade school. At one time I had it setting out; but if was a bi-plane and the upper wings had come off. So, quite a few years ago it had been placed inside the drysink for safe keeping.
Airplanes tended to bring tears to my eyes. Our son, Joel, had been a pilot. My how he loved to fly! Still, when I hear a small plane fly over the house I have the urge to run out to see if it is him circling overhead. How often we used to run out and wave to him. It's funny the little things you miss.
Jeff had liked planes too. When he was young, Jeff liked to draw, and he would draw one thing over and over again until he could draw it just right. Airplanes were one of those things. I think he spent a year each on airplanes, motorcycles, "Herbies" the Lovebug car, and then came all the Star Wars spaceships. So I took the little wooden airplane--it still looked fine with single wings--downstairs and set it on a ledge under one of the windows in the room that Jeff and Joel had shared.
As I continued my search for cups and saucers, there sat those two little green things. When I first received them, I was not quite sure what they were--maybe candle holders? Julie had given them to me one Christmas. When the kids were little, they saved their money that they had earned, and could hardly wait to go to Belmont's Dime Store or to our church's craft bazaar to do their Christmas Shopping. It would take them forever till they found something they could afford for everyone, and they were always so excited on Christmas Eve when they could give their own hand picked gifts to Jack nd I and their grandparents. So many precious memories seemed to be hidden away with all our cups and saucers and dishes!
Finally, I had everything I thought I would need for setting the table, and I was just about ready to close the doors when I spotted a ring box laying way in the back. What in the world was a ring box doing in here. I reached back and picked it up. As I opened the lid, my heart almost stopped. There, scotched taped to the bottom of the box was a little piece of paper with a very familiar handwriting. It said, "I love you, Mom" signed "Joel". Ring boxes, I guess, often contain very special gifts. This gift seemed to come from heaven, even though it was one Joel had probably given to me many years before.
Tears of Thanksgiving seemed to flood my eyes off and on the rest of that day as I prepared for our Special Christmas Dinner. Yes, that year's Christmas celebration was different, but the love that we shared as a family will always be with us, whether we live hundreds of miles away, on the other side of the globe, or with our Heavenly Father. And, because of the Gift the Christ Child came to give us, we can look forward to celebrating together many times again in heaven.
How can I ever thank God enough for His Gift!
"Ah, Dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make Thee a bed soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee."
