A Short, Sweet Christmas Story

This afternoon, just when I was ready to fall flat on my face from exhaustion, the phone rang. These last three days have been real grinders, starting with Sunday morning when our water heater started leaking while we were getting ready to go to church. We had "church" mopping up water in the basement for half of the morning, trying to keep ahead of the water until the service man got here. Monday, we spent half the day waiting for a new water heater to be delivered and when the man came to install it, he said that it was too difficult and refused to do it. Today, we had another plumber come, and while he was able to install the new water heater, it took all morning, and cost twice as much as we had first expected. After getting a great, running jump on getting ready for Christmas, our house was a mess, and we were really dragging. And then, the phone rang.

When I picked up the phone my caller i.d. said Claire Spellman: a name that I'd never seen before. I figured it was someone trying to sell me something. When I said hello, a woman said, "I know that you don't know me, but I owe you an apology." As the woman explained, she had opened a Christmas card from us, not realizing that it was for the previous tenant in her apartment. She was quite upset about it, and told me she had never met the woman who lived there before her, and had no forwarding address for her. I had sent the card to a woman who has booked the Gospel Messengers a couple of times, who had surgery earlier this fall. I had received an e-mail from her after the surgery, and the last I knew she was doing alright and was still living at the same address. I assured the woman on the phone that I wasn't upset that she'd inadvertently opened the card, and that I'd most likely be able to get the original recipient, Barbara Hurley's mailing address. And then, she wanted to talk about our Christmas Card.

The front cover of our card this year looks like a present, wrapped with a bow and says: "Each new day is a gift from God." The woman read the text on the cover to me, saying, "I know all about that!"
And then, she opened the card and started reading the message on the inside of the card. She kept telling me how beautiful the card is, and how much it meant to her. Then, she told me how much she appreciated the note that I had written for my friend Barbara Hurley. I had written that she was in our hearts and minds and that we would keep her in prayer. And the woman said, "Oh, I appreciate that so much! I need all the prayers that I can get!" She had accepted the card as being to her.

I told her that I'd seen her name on the caller i.d. on my phone, and thought that she might be a relative of Deacon Spellman, from my old church. She said, "No, we just moved up here from Brooklyn last year. That's probbly hard to believe that someone would move up here from Brooklyn." I told her that my wife was from Brooklyn, and one of her brothers still lives there, so it didn't sound unbelievable to me.

Finally, when she kept apologizing for mistakenly opening the card, offering to forward it if I could get the address, or mail it back to me, I told her to keep the card as hers. She sounded happy to have it. Sometimes, we can raise the spirits of complete strangers without ever knowing that we're doing it. I thanked her for letting me know, and wished her a very Merry Christmas.

And in lifting her spirits, she lifted mine and Ruth's.

Jeremiah