Go With the Spirit by Caroline Clemmons

I’m Caroline Clemmons and I’m so pleased to be here today. This is my favorite time of year! Everything seems to remind me of happy past holidays. However, like Joan Reeves, I prefer my snow in Hallmark movies rather than in my yard. Snow is lovely to see from your living room window, but most Texans don’t know how to drive on it.

To celebrate the season, we drive around to look at Christmas lights on homes, go to Interlochen—a housing area with astonishing light displays on the homes, send cards, and chuckle over how surprised family members will be with our gifts. Anticipation fills the air. How many days until Christmas?

One of the pleasant memories is of the first Christmas Eve that my sister in-law’s in-laws (Mr. and Mrs. joined our family celebration. My sister-in-law’s husband had never been allowed to celebrate Santa or receive gifts. His mother—Mrs. Scoffer—believed that exchanging gifts, having Santa, destroyed the real reason for the holiday, which was the birth of Christ.

My in-laws and my mom and Mr. and Mrs. Scoffer were in the same Sunday School class, so this belief wasn’t something Mr. and Mrs. Scoffer had heard in church. Not at all. My mother-in-law had promised to show the doubting couple that exchanging gifts could be a part of respectful worship. My husband and I didn’t know about the Scoffers before we arrived on Christmas Eve. It was our turn to stay with my parents, and we’d brought them from their home a couple of miles away to join the festivities. (I admit I preferred staying at my parents’ place.)

I remember that the doubting and defensive Scoffers sat together at the end of the couch nearest the door. The woman had her arms crossed over her chest, a clenched jaw, and an Oh, yeah? expression on her face. Slightly more reasonable, Mr. Scoffer leaned forward, as if not wanting to miss a detail. We had snacks about 6:30. At 7:00, my father-in-law read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. A prayer followed for those present, our friends and families, and all those who needed help, and for peace on Earth.

At “Amen,” the children cheered and my husband (his parents’ eldest child) passed out the gifts from under the tree. There were a lot!—even something for the two Scoffers. When the frenzy concluded, Mrs. Scoffer said, “I didn’t know it would be like that. You didn’t ignore the reason for Christmas at all. We could do this next year.”

Think of my poor brother-in-law and his sister all those years they didn’t receive gifts at Christmas. Boggles the mind. I do not intend to launch a debate about how we should celebrate Christmas. Lighten up, folks, and go with the spirit.

We give gifts with love to those we love. We receive pleasure by giving pleasure. We rejoice in the ability to share our love in a tangible way at Christmas. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with the spirit of peace on Earth in your heart.

                                   

Through a crazy twist of fate, Caroline Clemmons was not born on a Texas ranch. To compensate for this illogical error, she writes about handsome heroes, feisty women, and scheming villains in a tiny office surrounded by research books and mementos. She and her Hero live in North Central Texas cowboy country where they ride herd indoors on their two cats and two dogs as well as providing nourishment outdoors for squirrels, birds, and other critters.

The over sixty books she has created have made her a Top 100 Amazon historical author, a bestselling author, and won awards. She writes sweet to sensual romances, both historical and contemporary as well as time travel and mystery. In addition to her series she has written single titles and contributed to multi-author series and box sets. When she’s not writing, she loves spending time with her family, reading her friends’ books, dining in restaurants, browsing antique malls, delving into genealogy, checking Facebook, and taking the occasional nap.

Find her on her blog, website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest.

Join her and other readers at Caroline’s Cuties, a Facebook readers group for special excerpts, exchanging ideas, contests, giveaways, recipes, and talking to like-minded people about books and other fun things.

Click on her Amazon Author Page for an almost complete list of her books and follow her there.

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Caroline Clemons

A Christmas Miracle by Pamela S. Thibodeaux

Photo from Crafts by Amanda

The ghost of Christmases past haunted our house again in 1993. To say we were poor, would be an untruth, but to say money was tight is an understatement. As in years before, funds seemed to vanish, leaving very little, if anything, for gifts. This year was one of the worst.

My husband, an outside salesman, hadn’t been paid since November, when his boss left town on an extended vacation from Thanksgiving through New Year, without paying his employees, and we were trying to make it on my meager salary as a State Civil Service Employee at the local Charity Hospital.

Two days before Christmas Eve, I was in the Emergency Clinic picking up charts when the topic of being ready for Christmas was opened for discussion. When asked if I was ready, I replied that I was waiting for my check (which would be available on 12/23 or 24) and that we didn’t even have a tree yet.

Knowing that I had three children at home, everyone was shocked!

As things were brought out in the open about my husband’s check, or rather, lack of one, I was encouraged to scrounge the barrels of toys that had been collected for needy children who came to the hospital and see if there was anything I could use for mine. Not knowing that this was allowed, I hesitated. After all, we’d been through this before and the kids were old enough to understand our finances. Continued support as well as the knowledge that other hospital employees often did this as Christmas got closer and the barrels empty save for the less desirable gifts that children didn’t seem to want anyway, encouraged me to check it out. I found things like Uno cards, regular playing cards, puzzles and other small gift items that could be found at any Dollar store. Still, it was better than nothing and I was able to pick out a couple of things for each of my children.

But the greatest gift came from an unexpected source.

Psalm 34:15 says that “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears hear their cry.” As a newly recommitted Christian, I knew the Lord would provide something, though I never imagined how He would do it.

Upon leaving the clinic area, I returned to my desk in Admitting to finish the necessary paperwork before returning the charts to Medical Records. I hadn’t been at my desk for more than a few minutes when I was called by a nurse to meet her in the nurses’ lounge.

Since this particular nurse was one of my favorite people to work with, I didn’t hesitate, not knowing that the incident would be one that would live in my heart forever.

Upon entering the lounge, I found her nearly in tears. “I hope I don’t embarrass or humiliate you,” she began. “But I’d like to give you something.” With that, she handed me a check. “When I was newly single, I needed tires for my car and a new friend, a stranger really, gave me fifty dollars to buy them,” she said, as I, too humbled and, yes, embarrassed to say anything, just looked at her; tears welling in my eyes.

“He told me not to pay him back,” she continued, “but to return the favor by doing something in kind for someone in need whenever I could.”

By this time, the tears were flowing freely between us. “I was going to give you the fifty, but I found a little extra. I don’t want you to pay me back either, but do the same for someone whenever you can,” she concluded

Without even looking at the check, I put it in my pocket. We embraced and returned to our perspective work stations. The next morning over coffee with my husband, I told him the story and we opened the check to find it in the amount of one-hundred-dollars.

One-hundred-dollars doesn’t buy a lot, even in 1993, but it was more than enough to share the miracle of Christmas with our children, and we were able to send a small gift to our daughter who lived out of state.

The very first thing I did was go out and buy a tree; a pitiful little display item that had been knocked over and kicked around but was the only one available anywhere. The kids and I strung popcorn, and they made ornaments called The Eye of Jesus (or God’s Eye) that they’d learned to create in Catechism.

It was one of the most memorable Christmases I’ve ever had.

The gift this dear lady gave was more than money, it was affirmation…proof that my God shall supply all of my needs according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19).

Through all the years of change, I don’t have an Eye of Jesus ornament left, but the memory always reminds of the blessing and miracle of Christmas, of how God used this angel of mercy to impact the lives of a newly recommitted Christian and her family, and that the eye of the Lord is upon the righteous and His ears do hear their cry.

Learn to make God’s Eye (or Eye of Jesus) ornaments HERE.

~*~

Award-winning author, Pamela S. Thibodeaux is the Co-Founder and a lifetime member of Bayou Writers Group in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Multi-published in romantic fiction as well as creative non-fiction, her writing has been tagged as, “Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ and reviewed as “steamier and grittier than the typical Christian novel without decreasing the message.” Sign up to receive Pam’s newsletter and get a FREE short story! http://bit.ly/psthibnewsletter Website: http://pamelathibodeaux.com

Controversy and Inconsistencies are thieves of holiday joy for Keri...is there any hope for a happy holiday season?

For as long as she can remember, Keri Jackson has despised the hype and commercialism around Christmas—especially with the controversy over the time of Jesus’s birth. Will she get her wish and be free of the angst to truly enjoy Christmas this year?

Jeremy Hinton thinks Keri is a highly intelligent, deeply emotional, and intensely complex woman and he’s as fascinated by her aversion to Christmas as he is of the woman herself. A devout Christian at heart, he’s studied all of the world’s religions and homeopathic healing modalities. But when a rare bacterial infection threatens her life, will all of his faith and training be for naught?

Fans of near death experiences will enjoy this woman’s mystical journey into spiritual Truth.


Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Keris-Christmas-Wish-Inspirational-Paranormal-ebook/dp/B01MTLBWSR


Other online retailers: https://books2read.com/KerisChristmasWish