Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Christmas (04/25/05)
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TITLE: I'll Be Home | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sue Edwards
04/29/05 -
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How can one feel so forlorn at the most joyous time of the year? How can the pageantry and gatherings and shopping and Christmas planning be gaily surrounding a lonely heart? How can that heart be crying on the inside while the music of the season rings and jingles from the department store speakers?
It was my first divorced Christmas. He had packed up and left. Our kids were grown and gone and now so was he.
I'll make it through, I thought. I'm tough and I can hang Christmas lights while my heart breaks. I wept at the tangles of garland and the missing hooks from the glass ornaments.
I picked up our, or should I say my, nativity figures one by one. When I came to that little babe within the straw I ask Him to help me. I talked to that little helpless glass figure in the manger. I knew He wasn't within that glass, but still I talked. "What should I do Lord? Can I make it in through this season alone?" The figure stared back at me as if I weren't there. I decided to pack it away and not display it that year.
I wrapped all the figures back within the old browning newspapers and began placing them back within the storage box. I glanced out our, or should I say my, bay window. The snow was beginning to wisp around in tiny circles with the wind.
The postman was pulling up, so I left the weeping and papers to shuffle through the snow to the mailbox. I returned with a handful of more paper in a different form.
There was a card from my sister. She knew I must be having it hard, would I please come visit for the Holiday.
I looked at the mess of decorations and papers on the floor and decided it would be there when I returned. With a small bag packed I headed out the door.
Suddenly I had an urge to run back into the middle of the unfinished gala within the living room. Scrambling through the faded newspapers I found the tiny figure of the helpless babe. With it clasped tightly in my right hand and my bag in my left, together we started for the car in the drive.
I began to sing in my head, "I'll be home for Christmas".
KJV- 2 Corinthians 1:4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
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I loved the imagery of her running out the door, heading home, home where love, warmth and safety can be found. Very nicely done.