The Best Christmas Ever

By Camille Brooks

One of the most memorable Christmas’s ever began with a distressing phone call. A close relative was getting a divorce. We were in shock and heart-broken. This couple had once loved each other very much. However, the husbands’ addiction to drugs had left them destitute physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. They were unable to keep their marriage together in such unrelenting circumstances.  

The wife and children were moving to a shed on their grandparent’s farm. It was Christmas and they had lost everything and literally had nothing. We felt a longing to help them in some way. However, we were poor college students and often in need of a miracle ourselves in order to have enough food for our own family. How could we help?

Because it was Christmas time, both of our parents had sent us money. We had already spent it on our children’s Christmas presents. Our daughter had been asking for a cabbage patch doll, which were very popular and expensive at that time. Her friends already had them. Our son had been asking for a train, which was also costly. When we received the money from our parents, we were ecstatic that we could buy our children what they had been asking Santa for. 

As we thought about our sister in-law living in a shed instead of a home, and with no means to buy a Christmas for her children, somehow the excitement of seeing the joy in our own children’s eyes Christmas morning waned. All we could think about was the joy our niece might feel waking up to her own cabbage patch doll, and our nephews waking up to their own train set Christmas morning. 

So we packed up all we had, including the turkey and fixings for Christmas dinner. Then in the darkness of the night “Santa” stealthily delivered Christmas to a grieving family in a lonely forgotten shed. 

Our children never new what they were missing. A simple Christmas of just being together with small gifts was sufficient.

Even though we didn’t get to see the excitement in our own children’s eyes as they received what they wanted for Christmas, imagining the joy of our niece and nephews as they awoke Christmas morning made it the best Christmas ever!

With the passage of time; it will not be what we have received that fills our hearts with joy and warms our memories, but what we gave with a cheerful heart.

2 Corinthians 9:7 “Every man according as he purposely in his heart, so let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God loveth a cheerful giver”

Is there someone you could share Christmas with this year and make it the most memorable Christmas ever?

#LightTheWorld, #givethanks, #comeuntochrist, #Christmas