Christmas Miracles

Gone are the days when I wake up at the crack of dawn eager to open presents. The excitement is still there, but it’s tempered by the desire to sleep. Of course, when you go to bed at 5 am, it’s hard to get up early — presents or no presents. The anticipation of Christmas morning and curiosity of what was inside the wrapped boxes under the tree did help me wake up by mid-morning, though.

Gary waited patiently for me, and when I awoke we celebrated our 15th Christmas together as a married couple by ripping into our brightly decorated packages. Sharing gifts is one of the things I love about Christmas. It never gets old.

We played with our new “toys” and then got ready for the lunchtime arrival of my family. My parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephews all convened at our house to continue the celebration. We had a nice lunch and then got down to the exciting stuff — exchanging presents. Watching the kids open gifts is a blast. It’s a special treat to see Christmas through the eyes of a child.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the kids’ new toys, listening to Gary and Nick playing the Wii Guitar Hero, and simply hanging out enjoying each other’s company. I am truly blessed and thankful to have such a great family.

It was early evening by the time we said our goodbyes and the family returned to their homes. Gary and I settled down for a quiet evening together, but soon hunger began to rear its ugly head. We didn’t collect enough leftovers for a full meal and hadn’t stocked up our pantry with food for the holiday. We eat a lot of takeout so we don’t keep much food at home. Normally it’s not a problem, but it’s not normally Christmas.

We called our regular restaurants hoping that one of them would be open for business. They weren’t. We thought maybe one of the pizza joints would be open. They weren’t either. Finally we decided to jump in the car and drive around to see what we could find. After all, this is Dallas…there had to be something open, even if it was only fast food.

As we approached the first major shopping area near our house, I started to get a bad feeling. It’s usually packed with cars and activity, but tonight it was dead. All restaurants were locked up tight. I still had hope that the 24-hour fast food joints would be open — they couldn’t let the hungry people down on Christmas, could they? To answer the question…yes, they could. Everything was closed. It was a ghost town.

Undaunted we headed towards Frisco. Finally, we saw a Jack-in-the-Box with all its lights turned on. It had a long line of cars in the drive-thru, and since it happens to be one of my most hated fast food joints, we kept going. We turned the corner. IHOP was open — Yay!

Encouraged, we kept going — there had to be others. We continued to drive, but nothing else seemed to be open so we decided to turn around. When we did, we caught sight of an open sign glowing in the window of Snookie’s, a local grill and burger joint.

Aha, instant success! We would not go hungry tonight. Thank God for little Christmas miracles…hehe!

With a full belly, I reflect back on the day. Exchanging gifts and spending time with family is fun, but during this time of year, I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the real reason for our celebration today. God gave us the most unselfish, perfect gift ever given. I find it amazing that He would be willing to wrap Himself in flesh, live on this earth, and give His life so I could be saved from my sins. The depth of His love is unfathomable. I don’t deserve the gift He gave to me, but He gave it anyway. That’s the true miracle of Christmas.