It's A Christmas Miracle!

Big sins, little sins.  No such thing, right?  I would think that miracles are the same.  How can you classify divine intervention as big or little?  I think I still do sometimes.  Surviving my wreck and getting to keep my leg--big miracle.  Having cooler weather for Christmas--little miracle.  Surprise $167 a couple of days before Christmas--big miracle.  Finding $2 in my pants pocket--little miracle.  The story I want to tell you might qualify for you as a little miracle, but this is a GIANT one in our book.  Hang on for the shortest version I can give you of a long story.

Grab your coffee, your leftover turkey, or your terere, and take a minute to follow me.  It all started back around the birth of Camille, who is almost 15 now.  We were living in St. Stephen, SC, at the time.  My friend Valerie--an awesome singer, the Avon lady, a very soft-hearted giver, and the wife of one of my best high-school buddies--gave me a pretty blue and white blanket.  One of those couch throws that people buy with their favorite sports team logo, or some poem about what it means to be a mother, or Footprints in the Sand.  This one had little hearts and ducks and houses and fit perfectly on the back of my hand-me-down couch.

I used it to throw over my shoulder if someone came over and I happened to be nursing Camille, and then did the same two years later when Caroline came along.  Caroline became quite attached to this blanket and ended up sleeping with it, something that has continued every night to this day.  She's 13 now, so just imagine what this blanket (affectionately known as "keebie" because she got mixed up trying to say "beekie" when she was first learning to talk) now looks like.  I've stitched and restitched more times than I can count, but it's woven, meaning the strings just kinda unravel and no amount of stitching will make them hold on.  In a desperate attempt to salvage the keebie, I sewed a white sheet to the back of it and a satin border all around it, and stitched lines diagonally across the whole thing in every direction.  Still it continued to unravel.

Earlier this year, she came to me almost in tears, pointing out bigger and bigger holes in the keebie.  She admitted it was time to put it in a safe place so that it wouldn't be totally destroyed, but didn't think she could sleep without it.  Enter ebay.  I figured you can find ANYTHING on ebay, right?  Did I mention that this was a limited edition blanket from Avon?  I started praying, because this was looking like finding a needle in a haystack.  I looked everywhere once ebay let me down.  I started sending out emails to anyone I could think of.  I searched through online Avon catalogs and collection houses.  Desperation set in.  I let Caroline know I'd keep sewing, but that she may need to make a decision soon and try to get used to either sleeping without a blanket or trying a towel in its place.

On December 23, something told me I should send Ken to the post office.  I REALLY wanted to go myself this time, but our car was still in the shop and I couldn't walk the 7 or 8 kilometers needed to get to and from the bus stop, or climb in and out of the bus, for that matter.  So on one of the hottest days of the year, he set off to check the mail, just in case we got a Christmas card or something.  Our car ended up "done" that day, so he was able to detour and pick that up--already a good day!  Then he made it to the post office, where not only was there a card with a Christmas movie inside (YAY!), but Valerie--dear, sweet Valerie--had mailed us a box full of her vacuum-sealed Christmas baking.  What did she use to pad the neatly-packed bread and cookies and peanut butter balls?  Yep, you guessed it, a keebie exactly like the one she'd given me around 15 years ago.  She had an extra in her closet.  What a gal.  So today, Caroline got the gift of a lifetime, and the whole family snacked on baked goods just like the abuelas would have been feeding us if we were closer to them.


I'm so glad to know that God is still concerned with the little things, which amount to big things in daily life.  We're calling it the Christmas miracle.  :)