Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Christmas Cards (11/06/08)
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TITLE: A Card in the Dark | Previous Challenge Entry
By Randy Lucas
11/07/08 -
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The distant sounds of caroling trailed off to a soft hum.
“Round yon virgin….” like the last words you hear before drifting off to sleep.
He laughed to himself. It wasn’t a happy laugh. It was more one of contempt. He had long since stopped finding any joy in the world, especially at Christmas. Christmas lights just made the shadows lengthen, reminding him of how dark his despair had become. With each passing year, the carols on the city streets below had increasingly sounded cruel and cold, a slashing razor sharp reminder of his silent hell. The Rockwellian portraits of family holiday gatherings just made him feel more isolated and alone. Christmas had become for him, the cruelest of seasons.
He must have drifted off to sleep, for he jumped when his head nodded. The streets below were quiet now, still. The fire was now merely cooling coals. And in this moment of dark and cold and loneliness, his mind began to wander.
He remembered a time when Christmas didn’t hurt. Before the drugs and booze and criminal record, there were some times worth remembering. But that was a whole other world, a whole other life he had once lived. There had been a wife who loved him but left him after his third affair. There was a daughter and son who had tried to understand, but who he had pushed away because of his inner demons.
And now he was alone, all alone. It was dark, it was cold, and it was Christmas.
His monthly disability checks, a result of failing health due to years of chemical addiction, barely paid the rent in his one-bedroom apartment. He had been sober for 18 months now, but the damage had been done. He had lost his family, his health, his dignity. And now he simply survived, one excruciatingly slow day at a time, and waited to die.
He drifted off to sleep again.
It was about 6:30am when his nod jarred him awake again. By now the fire was completely gone, and he awoke to the realization that the room had grown very cold. He reached to pull the worn and torn quilt that lay on the floor beside him.
As he pulled the quilt around his tired shoulders he saw something fall to the floor. To his surprise, it was a card-shaped envelope with his name and address. Reaching for the light switch and his reading glasses, he examined the envelope. He had not received a Christmas card for several years, but as he held the red envelope that bore his name and address in green ink, there was no doubt about it. A Christmas card had found him, early in the morning on December 24th.
His fingers trembled as he reverently opened the envelope, almost as if to tear the paper would have caused the card some great pain. Finally, after inching his fingers along the creases, he pulled the card slowly from the envelope.
The outside of the card was a manger, but it was very much different from anything he had ever seen. He easily recognized Mary and Joseph, and the baby in the manger. He noted the shepherds and the animals. But he had never seen a Christmas card like the one he held in his hand.
For, in addition to the traditional observers that one expected to see beneath the Star of Bethlehem at the stable, there were others who had somehow quietly gathered. And he couldn’t help but notice that the expressions on their faces were not unlike the one that greeted him each day in the mirror.
Here was a gathering of the poor, the forgotten, the isolated, marginalized, the outcasts. And in a strange and mysterious way, he knew that he was somewhere in that group of quiet, referent worshippers.
He was so mesmerized by the picture, he almost forgot to open it. When he finally did, it simply read, “Merry Christmas. I love you”.
“And that was the beginning, of my redemption”, said the pastor during the annual Christmas Eve Service. “And it is my hope, that you will experience the birth of the Christ child, in your places of loneliness and pain.”
Many wiped silent tears from their eyes, as the lit candles illuminated the darkened sanctuary, as the words continued to echo in hurting hearts, “Merry Christmas. I love you”.
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