December 23rd, and I sit here feeling the need to write. It isn’t often that I am compelled to put fingers to keys without a clear thought to begin with, but here I am. The only thought vaguely dancing around my head being that in two more days, it will be Christmas Day.
Getting ready for Christmas this year was a depressing affair. Normally I like to have my decorating done on December 1st, that didn’t wrap up till roughly a week ago. I like to have my family photo taken early in the month and get Christmas cards put together to hand out in person or distribute online. (I don’t do the stamp thing anymore) The family photo didn’t happen till this past weekend, so the cards, which were also late in being put together, didn’t get distributed till this past weekend as well. Needless to say, the family photo was not part of the package this year as they won’t be ready for pickup till January 10th. Details of what would happen on Christmas Day were sketchy too until this past weekend with the shopping finally being done, you guessed it, this past weekend!
For someone who appreciates planning, timing, and getting things done early, this was a tough month. It was also tough because of finances blowing out the window, causing more bill payments to bounce than I care to admit to. I began praying for a Christmas miracle. Sunday morning came “this past weekend”, and we left the church with four Christmas cards in our hands. After getting home from the family photo shoot, we opened the cards to find they all contained varying amounts of CASH! My daughter and I were heading out again, so the next trip through town included a stop at the ATM. Another bill had bounced over the weekend, but there is enough in the bank to cover several smaller bills and hopefully most of one of the large ones. As I write this, I am waiting for the entire amount to clear before divvying it all up. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’d been booked previously for a small banquet Monday evening, but late last week I was asked about doing a funeral this coming Saturday after Christmas. I got called into the church office to remove malware off a Children’s ministries laptop, and may have another malware task to do on Boxing Day.
Depression is giving way to amazement! On Sunday, as I opened each card, my daughter kept repeating, “Mom, you asked. . . God answered. . . you asked”. She’s quite right. I did ask. With gift cards going into the gas tank, Christmas would have been the leanest on record if God hadn’t brought a guest to our table who offered to buy the meat for Christmas dinner! We put a small card package together for our guest, but true to God’s active presence in our home, we’d get a phone call Monday morning telling us that my son’s workplace had a package waiting for him in the warehouse! We went by today, and it turns out to be something that, while our household can’t make use of it, our guest most certainly CAN! Now the “tiny gift” I’d told her was waiting here, has ballooned!
I find this so exciting!!! God has done this to us in the past, where our efforts at blessing others got turned upside down and multiplied many times over right back into our own laps. Now we are seeing this happen to our guest this year!
God is still in the miracle-working business! A food hamper from the church will take the edge off my daughter’s R&B grocery run at the end of the month as well. Finances have been so low this fall, that I use her R&B to keep food on the table. Anything extra at month’s end helps with bills. So God even took a bit of a load off that area of finances too!
God is so good! I may not understand why so many bills were allowed to bounce this fall, nor why income dried up as badly as it did in December particularly. But to be able to act as a conduit for God to bless others just brightens the entire season for me!
Allow me to be one more conduit, this time to you dear reader. Here is a youtube playlist which includes four Christmas carols as arranged and played by my daughter on her handmade Pictish harp.
Merry Christmas!
