My Favorite Miracle Story To Tell

I cannot tell you how excited I am to write this blog.  Ever since I wanted to start writing, this miracle is the story I have been looking forward to the most.  In fact if I started a blog, and only wrote this one story, and never wrote again, I would have felt that it was a success.  The reason I’ve waited to tell it here is that it is a seasonal story, and really needs to be told at Christmas.  Since we’ve now jumped with two feet into December, I’m ready to write.  Most of my blogs take about 5 minutes to read, but I have to apologize, this one may be a little longer.  Please stick with it, it will be worth it in the end, I promise!  OK, enough hype already, let’s just get to it!

The First Christmas After My Wife Left Me

I am an absolute mess.  I’m needy, sensitive, heartbroken, forlorn, unstable, and desperate.  How am I going to make it through Christmas?  I am going to have my 2 year old son, Jackson, with me, so I need to do something.  He didn’t ask for this, so I have to do whatever I can to give him a good Christmas.  This is all on me. 

It was a weight I could not bear in my broken state, but I mustered up all I had and did what I could to try and make Christmas happen.  I had insisted on Christmas being at my house that year, and I had to decorate.

She never lets me put up Christmas lights on the house.  Well, she’s not here anymore, so this year Christmas lights are going up!  I don’t have a lot of lights, but I will make sure it will be at least a respectable display of lights. 

It took several days to get them up.  Starting with the tree that was in the front yard near the street,  I then moved to the railings on the front porch.  I decided I needed a few more lights to complete my display.  With each light, I felt a glimmer of hope, that I just might get through this with some joy.  This could actually be a decent Christmas despite the circumstances.

I had Jackson every other weekend, and every Tuesday evening.  When I had him, I wanted him in charge of lighting up the house.  It was a special time for us, and I loved seeing the joy on his face when those lights came on.  If there is such a thing as magic, it was in those lights.

Sneak Attack

Work was in Gainesville, GA at the time, which was at least a 45 minute commute, and add in a stop by daycare and it was somewhere between an hour to an hour and a half to get home each evening.  Lots of time to think.  Too much time to think, and I thought, and I thought.  The mind can play tricks on you when you think that much.  You create scenarios that are not real, but in your mind they are real, and your emotions respond in kind.  On this drive home my mind created unthinkable scenarios of the how, what, where, when, and whys of the divorce and what she might be doing.

I can’t do this right now.  I have to get Jackson, and he can’t see me like this.  I’ve got to get it together before I pick him up.  Brain, you better stop.  Maybe I can just roll my window down and get some fresh air.  Ahh, I’m here.  Hey Jackson!  How was your day?  Did you learn any new songs?  Let’s get going, you have to turn on those Christmas lights!

And home we went.  We pulled up in the driveway and get out of the car.  Jackson goes to turn on the lights, and nothing.   -.   -.   -.-.-.-.-.

What is wrong with these lights?  Alright Jackson, you go inside and get your snack.  Let me see what’s going on.  Why are all of these lights on the ground?  I wonder if a branch fell.  Something is strange.  Let me get my ladder.

Night was starting to settle in and my magical lights didn’t look so magical with only half of them on.  I got my ladder and climbed to the roof to get a better look.

Something chewed through these lights.  What?  The ground is strewn with lights.  Squirrels!  I can hear them in the overhang above the porch skittering around.  They came out and ate my lights, thinking they were berries!  This isn’t fair!  I just finished putting these up yesterday!

My Cashmere Sweater, Bleached

I can’t deal with this right now.  I’ll deal with it tomorrow once Jackson goes back to his mom.  For now, I need to focus on Jackson.

So I made dinner and we ate.  I went through our nighttime routine of getting a bath, and then reading books before Jackson went to sleep.  Once Jackson was asleep, I had chores to do.  I cleaned up from dinner and then got some laundry done.

When I was going through the divorce, small things mattered a lot to me, and one of those things was a cashmere sweater.  I’m not a clothes guy by ANY means, but I really liked this sweater, and so I bought it one on sale, and I wore it.  I loved wearing it.

I don’t remember where the sweater was exactly, but I do know it was near the washing machine.  Too close to the washing machine, because when I went to do a load of whites, as I poured the bleach, some of it splattered.  Not much splattered, but a few drops of bleach landed on my sweater.

No no no no!

I grabbed the sweater as fast as I could and ran it under water, but it was too late.  The spots grew larger and larger and then ate several holes in my new sweater.  I was crushed.  crushed. crushed, and it set me off.

I Can’t Get Up

I ran to the washer and I kicked it as hard as I could, and then I crawled to the living room and I laid on the floor sobbing.  The pain was unbearable.  I writhed, yes writhed, on the floor unable to control my legs, feeling my heart torn from my chest again.  The bible talks about weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.  I never understood what that looked like, but I got a glimpse of it this night.  I slammed my fist into the floor. And again. And again.  Every muscle in my body clinched in convulsions, (I told you, I was sensitive), until I was exhausted.  Mercifully, Jackson slept through it all.

I have to get up, but I can’t.  My legs aren’t working.  I can’t lift my head.  I can’t see straight.  “sniff”, I need, “sniff”, I need some help.  If I can  just need to reach my phone.  I’m so shaky.

I had a circle of men that came along side of me during the divorce.  I would not have survived without them.  One of those men was Ryan, and he picked up the phone.  I talked with him for several minutes and told him the story of what had happened that day, how my mind had treated my so cruelly, how the squirrels had eaten my lights, and how my sweater was ruined.

I’ve done everything I can to make this a special Christmas, and God is turning his back on me.  I am cursed. NOTHING I am doing is saving my marriage.  My lights are ruined, my sweater is ruined, my life is ruined.  I have nothing and I am nothing.

Ryan talked me down from the ledge, and said he would come over, but he couldn’t come right away.  He had to attend to his family, which I understood, but he would be over later.

From Magical To Miracle

So I waited, still lying on the floor, all energy spent.  At some point I think I fell asleep, my body, my mind, couldn’t take anymore. Then at about 10:30-11 o’clock at night I was awoken by a knock at the door.

It was Ryan and his brother, Jordan, and about 5 or 6 other guys.  They jumped out of their trucks with ladders, several garbage bags FULL of lights, and squirrel poison, and they wasted no time getting to work.  I was overwhelmed.

They strung lights around every bush.  They replaced my lights that had been eaten.  Ryan spread squirrel poison on my roof.  They went up the ladders and reached up as high as they could with lights so that every every tree had lights all the way around them and all the lights were used.

I felt like Clark Griswald when they turned the lights on that night.  Never in my entire life has anyone showed me this much kindness. I am forever grateful to Ryan and his brother for what they did for me that night.

I thought I was being cursed, when all along, God was setting the stage for a blessing, a HUGE blessing.  He whispered to me that night.  “All along, Tony, you were trying to make it magical, but I’m making miracles.”  It’s true.  God did a miracle in my heart that evening.