by DiAnn Mills

This time of year we hear a lot about angels--the angel who spoke to Mary the mother of Jesus, the angel who spoke to Joseph, and the angels who spoke to the shepherds.

We understand that down through the ages, God has sent angels to minister to those in need. When I think about the perilous journey across our country in wagon trains, the diseases and tragedies that killed masses of people, and the many dangers of the 19th century, I know our ancestors possessed incredible faith to help them through whatever they encountered.

Many of you have miraculous stories that have been passed down from generation to generation of how those in need were delivered. This month I want to share my own miraculous story.

I remember the bleak day I realized I had enough food for two more days. I had no money and no job. How would I take care of my four young sons? I tried to pray, but fear hung suspended in my mind and choked any semblance of words. I wanted to cry, but realized that once I started, the tears might never end. Single parenting and children who had more needs than I could fill paralyzed my thoughts.

Swallowing my pride, I phoned my parents in another state. Perhaps they’d take the boys until I got on my feet. The thought of parting with them made me physically ill. They had already dealt with abandonment issues from their father’s recent departure, and I knew being separated from me would increase their insecurities – and mine.

After the phone call to my parents and the news they felt something good would happen soon, I painted a smile on my face and went through the motions of preparing my sons’ dinner. The doorbell rang, interrupting my silent prayer for faith. A middle-aged woman stood there, looking somewhat perplexed and nervous.

“Can I help you?” My voice released staggering emotions.

She nodded and gave me a faint smile. “I think so. God told me the family living here needs food. I have my station wagon full of groceries.” She pointed to her vehicle.

My boys rushed outside to help carry in bag after bag of much-needed food. Not since Christmas had they been so excited. Me either, for that matter.

After thanking the woman and watching her leave, I realized she hadn’t given me her name! And I had asked! I never saw the woman or the chariot of food again. God had sent an angel to feed my family!

The food in those grocery bags fed us for a long time. Every item was something I would have purchased, even special treats. This blessing marked the beginning of many. Within a week I found a job directing a day care center, and my children never went hungry or without care. The true treasure was the provision of our faithful Father who sent an angel to make sure my sons were fed, and we were not separated.

I wasn’t the first to experience an angel, and I’m sure I won’t be the last.

Ahh....traditions.

Whether establishing one for the first time or continuing one that's generations old, they have a way of weaving themselves into your heart and lives and creating a feeling of warmth when you share them with others.

These days, Christmas has become so commercialized, the real meaning and spirit of the holiday seems to have disappeared. Over 100 years ago, the time spent with family, the simple pleasures, and the lack of selfishness was far more common. Sure, the aim for personal gain still existed. It's been around since the dawn of time. But on the whole, folks were far more interested in helping others than in helping themselves.

It's one of the reasons why I love to write historical fiction. I get to delve into the days gone by and explore the richness of character, family closeness and overall good will for your fellow man. It's refreshing to pen a heartwarming scene between characters who have nothing but each other and a wood stove or a fireplace...yet they still smile and find a reason to share in the joy of the season. All right, so they might have a few peppermint sticks too. :)

But when I write a Christmas scene in one of my books, my favorite thing to find out is what traditions my characters have and how they got started. Depending upon the setting of my story, these traditions can be as different as night and say. Before Christmas became so standardized across this country, various regions celebrated in far different ways.

One thing remained constant, though. The realization that it's a far greater blessing to give than to receive. And that knowledge was lovingly shared with children as soon as they could grasp the concept. There's a certain inner satisfaction when children can be involved in the entire process and contribute in their own way.

One of the best aspects of this Christmas season is having the opportunity to revisit all the wonder and joy of Christmas through the eyes of my daughter. Seeing a child discover everything for the first time brings all the excitement back once more and even introduces a whole new perspective on certain aspects.

Traditions are explored on a whole different level, the hum-drum becomes woo-hoo as even the most mundane tasks are given a new dimension. This is only the beginning. There are many more years of enjoying a new lease on life as we celebrate the seasons with our daughter, making new traditions and continuing a few old ones.

So, this Christmas, take the challenge to see even just one tradition or aspect of the season through new eyes. You might just be amazed at the difference it makes in your life.

Now, what are some traditions that you and your family have? If you know how they got started, share that as well. Looking forward to reading your replies.

---

Tiffany Amber Stockton is an author, online marketing specialist and freelance web site designer who lives with her husband and fellow author in beautiful Colorado Springs. They celebrated the birth of their first child in April and have a vivacious puppy named Roxie, a Border Collie/Flat-Haired Retriever mix. She has sold eight books so far to Barbour Publishing. Other credits include over 30 writing articles, five short stories with Romancing the Christian Heart, and contributions to the books: 101 Ways to Romance Your Marriage and Grit for the Oyster.

Read more about her at her web site: http://www.amberstockton.com/.

The year God first told me to become a professional writer, He also told me to bless people at Christmas with my gift. In 1997, I wrote this historical Christmas story, and it is my gift to you this year:

Each hesitant footstep sounded a hollow drumbeat in the nearly empty house. Marion wandered from room to room mourning more than the loss of her parents. Yes, this Christmas would be lonely without Mother and Father, but she had had almost a year to get used to them being gone. Last winter, when the influenza raged through the countryside robbing families of members, Marion had questioned why God had allowed her to live while He took her lovely mother. Marion couldn’t be sorry that her father had also succumbed to the dreaded disease. Since he had come home from the fighting without either of his legs, he had been only a shell of the man who had marched valiantly to the war confident that the South would quickly win.


How long could a war really last? It had been three long agonizing years. Years that had stolen more than the young manhood of the South. Years that slowly leeched the wealth as well. That was what Marion was mourning that clear, sunny, cold December day. The loss of so many of the family possessions.

As she entered the music room, her eyes were drawn to the corner where the ebony piano had reigned as the monarch. How she missed sitting on the stool and running her fingers up and down the ivory keys releasing the notes held captive there–music that lilted through the air and comforted her whatever her distress. But the piano had been the first piece of furniture to go, and for such a small sum. Mother had been so distressed, but the meager funds had carried them through almost a month while father fought the demons of pain and other agonies he had brought home with him.

Then other treasured family heirlooms had followed the piano–the rosewood desk her grandfather had built for her grandmother as a wedding present, the elegant sideboard with the stained glass doors, the china her great grandparents had brought from England. As a third son of a nobleman, her great grandfather had left his ancestral home to come to America. And he had done well. This plantation was a tribute to his determination to be his own man. It had sustained a growing family–and a growing family of slaves.

What a pity Father had gone to war. He didn’t believe in slavery, but he did believe in something he called “State’s Rights.” Soon after he and Mother had married, they had freed all the slaves—and even educated them. Because of this, most of the Negroes had stayed on, and the plantation had continued to prosper.

Then Father had gone off to war. That’s when everything changed. Many of the freed Negroes had moved to the North leaving Mother with fewer and fewer people to help run the plantation. Every year had become harder and harder.

When Father returned in such bad shape, Mother seemed to lose heart. She spent all her time trying to make him comfortable, trying to restore his self-confidence.

The running of the plantation was left to Marion. With the help of Daisy and Joshua, the two remaining Negroes, Marion had done what she could. Still Mother had to start selling off the treasures. And then Marion’s two dearest treasures had died within a week of each other.

“Miss Marion,” Daisy’s warm molasses voice called from the parlor. “Where are you, Miss Marion?”

Marion retraced her steps to the warmest room of the house, the only room where they burned a fire in the daytime.


“What is it, Daisy?” Marion looked across the large room toward the fireplace.

Daisy sat before the blazing fire peeling wrinkled sweet potatoes. Even the parlor had been stripped of all but a few pieces of furniture. Three chairs were in front of the fireplace, with one small round table beside one of them. So little in such a large room which had once seemed crowded.

“I think someone’s comin’ up from the road.”

Marion looked out one of the front windows peeking from behind the drapes which were kept closed against the cold. She didn’t see anything, but she began to hear the faint sound of hoofbeats on the packed dirt of the drive.

“Who could it be? I hope it’s not any Union soldiers.”

“Lawsy, Miss Marion, surely not.” Fear caused Daisy to revert to her old way of speaking. She quickly gathered up all she was working on and went to the cookhouse looking for Joshua.

“You’d better go into the house. Miss Marion might need you,” Daisy sat down before the large stove and returned to her task.

Marion watched as a ramshackle wagon drawn by two scrawny mules came into sight. It was one of the squatters who had settled on a burned-out and abandoned plantation a few miles away. He was driving slowly and looking at a lump in the back of the wagon as much as he looked at the drive ahead. Marion wondered what the pile of quilts covered. She watched as the man carefully stopped the wagon. He sat and looked at the house before he climbed down.

Marion was wary as he climbed the steps and knocked on the door. She was glad Joshua was there to answer the almost timid summons. It gave her a chance to scan the surroundings for signs of enemy soldiers.

“Miss Marion,” Joshua was standing at the door to the parlor. “This man and his wife need help.”

“Are you sure it’s not a trap?”

“I don’t think so. His wife is about to have a baby, and he doesn’t know what to do.”

Marion trembled. She had been 16 and protected when her father went off to war. In the three years since, she had had to take control of the plantation–what was left of it. She had learned responsibility the hard way, but she didn’t know anything about childbirth.

“How can we help her?”

“Daisy was a right good midwife in her day. She could help if it’s all right with you, Miss Marion.”

How could Marion turn them away? She knew there wasn’t anyone else close who could help them. Besides, it was Christmas Eve. Maybe having a baby born here would make it seem more like Christmas.

“You help the man bring her in. I’ll go get Daisy.”

Marion wasn’t sure how the men got the poor woman inside the house, but she and Daisy found her on a pallet in front of the fireplace in the parlor. The woman’s husband was crouching beside her holding her hand as she moaned and writhed on the pallet. He looked relieved and stood up when the two women entered.

“I’ll help your Black man put the horse and wagon away.” He seemed eager to leave the room.

While Daisy examined the woman and made her pallet more comfortable, Marion heard the men reenter the house. Then she heard muffled voices in the hall.

Daisy sent Marion to the cookhouse to set water on to boil. She also asked Marion to get some of the older linens and tear them in various sizes to prepare for the birth.

The man seemed agitated as he paced the large entrance hall. Joshua was trying to sooth him when Marion first walked by them. Then when she returned to the linen closet, she could hear every word the men said.


“You don’t seem like an excited new father to me.” Joshua sounded almost condemning which wasn’t typical of the gentle man.

“How can I be excited? It’s not my baby.” The man spat out the bitter words.

“You did say she’s your wife.” Joshua’s statement sounded like a question.

“That she is.”

“Was she carrying another man’s child when you married?” Joshua’s tone had softened.

“No.” The man paused, then continued. “Some soldiers came by right after we built our shanty. I couldn’t tell which side they were on. Maybe they were renegades. They took everything they could, and then they . . . ”

“I understand. But why do you think the child is from that?”

“My . . . wife . . . hasn’t been the same since it happened. She hasn’t wanted to be touched . . . even by me. I tried to understand. I was gentle with her and didn’t push her. Then she was with child.”

Marion’s heart was breaking for the man—and for the woman who labored in the parlor. She peeked around the door in time to see Joshua place his large hand gently on the man’s shoulder.

“But you were together as man and wife before it happened. It could be your child.”

“No. She had had her . . . womanly time before they came, and we . . . never . . . ”

Joshua bowed his grizzled head and murmured too low for Marion to hear, but she knew he was praying with the man. They stayed that way for a long time, and she didn’t want to interrupt. She was glad her sewing basket was setting on the shelf of the linen closet. With her scissors, she began cutting a sheet, all the time murmuring a prayer for the couple.

“Are you a God-fearing man?” Joshua’s question startled Marion.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well, I’m sure Joseph must have felt the way you do, at first, when Mary told him about carrying the Christ Child, but he was the father the Boy needed. And this child needs you for a father.”

Just then a tiny cry was heard from the parlor followed by Daisy’s exclamation, “It’s a boy!”

This truly is a special Christmas, Marion thought as she rushed to take the cloths to the mother and Christmas boy.

©1997 Lena Nelson Dooley

I gave a keynote speech at the Heart of America Christian Writers conference on this and this condensed version was printed in the Christian Fiction Online Magazine http://christianfictiononlinemagazine.com/ -

I thought it might be appropriate to share it with you here:

We are living in the end times. The wildly popular Left Behind series put this on everyone’s minds. But they are a work of fiction and believers have varying opinions on what part of the books is true or not true, whether things will work as they depicted it or not. However we feel about it most believers think that we are living in that time.

The Apostles worked feverishly because they were concerned that they could not get their work done before Jesus returned for them. They expected it not only within their lifetime but lived with an immediate expectation of the event. I believe that is actually what God has in mind for all of us, to live our lives as though he’ll be back at any time.

There are many, many people who do not believe in the second coming. They say we’ve been looking for it for two thousand years and it has never happened so it isn’t going to happen. You know I’ve lived over 60 years and have never been run over by a train, but does that mean it can’t happen tomorrow?

Others do believe it, know what the Book of Revelations says and since they feel they can’t do anything to change things are just content to wait for it. We could do that, but is it what God wants us to do? Or does he want us to do what the Apostles did and work feverishly to get our work done before we are called home? I think we all know the answer to that one.

So how do we do it? If we are a writer and want to use those skills for the Lord, how do we go about it? I believe there are two ways to write for the Lord, to decide we are going to do it in which case it is an offering, or to be called to do it in which case it is a divine assignment and an obligation.

I know some people believe all Christian writers have been called but I’m afraid I don’t believe that any more than I believe that everybody who would like to preach has been called by God to do so. But let me quickly say I have no argument with those who believe otherwise and have no compulsion to have them see it my way. I’m just saying what I believe.

I wrestled with this myself. I decided I wanted to use my faith in my writing, but was it a calling or an offering? To tell you the truth I really didn’t want the obligation of it being a calling. The testimony on the process that I went through deciding what God wanted me to do is in the writing testimony at my website http://www.terryburns.net/. Let me just say I felt I was only a fiction writer, and it couldn’t be that I was being called to do it. Then my instructor smiled and said, “Yes, you’re only a fiction writer, and Jesus only told parables.”

I got the message.

Then I learned the next big difference between the two. If it was an offering, then it would be made out of my own skill and ability. If God was assigning me the task, He would see that my ability, skill and even character was molded to fit the requirements. Every time I stalled out in my writing, a sermon, Sunday school, Bible study or something else would provide EXACTLY what I needed, and I would be underway again.

Then came doubt. It wasn't going as fast as it should. If God wanted this, shouldn't it be happening faster? Bigger? Surely I had misunderstood the call.
Doubt.

No, all things in God's time. Look at how long it took Him to prepare Moses, Abraham, the Apostles, even how long Jesus himself was prepared before he began his ministry. All the figures of the Bible were prepared before God used them.

Who did I think I was that I thought I could just start writing and have immediate success? I realized patience was all-important particularly if it was a calling and not an offering.

Waiting, that’s a tough one.

If it were up to us, we'd lay out the whole plan so we could see every tiny aspect. We'd most likely disagree with parts of it, want to change a lot of it, and oh yes, have a back-up plan ready in case God's plan and His timing didn't work. Perhaps that's why God doesn't show us the whole thing at once. He knows we'd want to get our own ideas and our own timing involved.

Then I discovered that callings change. I came to realize that the first book in my Mysterious Ways series was a calling but the other two in the series were offerings. I have no problem with that. A sincere offering I’m sure is well received and blessed, but God was not in them in the same way that He was in the first one.

My calling changed again. I started feeling led to work as an agent, to help others get their words out where they will serve the Lord. Even though I continue to write, I started feeling I could have more impact by helping get more content out there. I turned my attention to that and specifically to helping new writers get published for the first time. I can’t afford to represent ALL new writers of course, but I have had some success at it.

So that’s my pathway here. How about other Christian writers? I think we all have to go through a vetting process of finding out what God really wants from us and then try to decide the best way to get it done.

If in fact we are in end times and we all want to use our talents to the best of our abilities to serve the Lord then it behooves us to prepare ourselves as best as we can, constantly work to perfect our craft while we wait on God’s perfect timing. The time may indeed be short and if it is, we all want to be about the Father’s business when it comes.

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