Miracle Christmas

It seems for our family that December is the financially tightest month on the calendar. Merle Haggard has a well known song "If We Can Make It Through December" which embodies the sentiment. I suspect that we're not alone. The holidays can be the most financially tight times of the year. The pressure to purchase presents gets pretty high - especially if there are kids in the house.

This December looked to be the worst in the history of our family's existence. Having lost my job barely a month ago, we were behind on bills for most of the year. We were in danger of losing our house and a car. There was no way we could afford anything for Christmas this year. We tried to prepare our children in the weeks leading up to the holiday. It seemed like I'd be singing Merle's song the entire month, only there was no end in sight.

We've tried to teach our children over the years that Christmas isn't about the gifts. Down deep, however, having to do without gifts at Christmas really hurts. I remember the feeling of returning to school after such a Christmas as a boy. Just hearing kids talk about what they got over the Christmas Break was more painful than anything I had ever known. Forget all that "supposed to" stuff. It just hurt.

As Christmas neared, I tried to gradually prepare our kids and could see disappointment in their faces. To their credit, they didn't pout about our circumstances. We often talked about previous Christmas memories. One of the most memorable was two years ago. A friend of the family gave us a Toys-R-Us gift card to say thanks for our friendship. Wouldn't it be nice if that happened again! The truth was that such a thing wouldn't happen again and sadly we all knew it.

But, just when we resigned ourselves to our situation, the miracles started unfolding.

The first miracle took place shortly after Thanksgiving. My former boss was in a conference call with my now current boss. Shortly after the conference call, my former boss received an e-mail from me. He had told me when I left the company before "if there's anything I can do for you, please let me know." My wife and my dad both encouraged me to contact him to see if anything might be available with the company. I sent him the e-mail and he promptly contacted my current boss to tell him about me. Within a few days, I was happily re-employed by my former employer. Coincidence? Hardly - that is if you believe that God is still at work in the world today.

About the same time, I was trying to claim unemployment benefits. (I was notified that I would not receive benefits, due to circumstances surrounding my dismissal. Currently this is in appeal with the TWC) Still even more miracles began to take place.

I started receiving calls from different ones needing work done on their computers and was paid well for my time. We received several checks, one of which was from a former employer for proceeds on a sale of outstanding shares of stock that I didn't know about. People offered us cash out of the blue. It was like watching "It's A Wonderful Life" - only we were participating in the story.

My wife and I were up late on Christmas Eve wrapping Christmas presents. After the last present had been wrapped and tucked under the tree, we sat down together in our living room, basking in the warm lighting from the Christmas tree. We marveled at how our circumstances had changed so dramatically in the course of a month. Just being in our home, celebrating Christmas like this, was more than we could have hoped for only days before.

We like to say that God is concerned about our circumstances. We are told to believe God for the big stuff and we often see such prayers answered. But, every now and then, God does something that is so completely unexpected that it takes us by suprise. How can we begin to explain stuff like this?

It's the stuff that miracles are made of. That is why for our family, Christmas 2005 will forever be the miracle Christmas.