Teresa Pollard | Spread the Christmas Joy

A Precious Gift

My favorite Christmas memory is a bittersweet one. It was my youngest daughter Kara’s last Christmas, and she already knew it would be her last. She’d been through chemotherapy and was in congestive heart failure. The doctors had said she’d never walk again. Nevertheless, she was absolutely determined to make it the best possible Christmas she could for her seven year old son, Darron. So there she was in her pajamas at 5 o’clock on Black Friday morning with her bald head shining, walking through Walmart using the cart for support, and armed with his Christmas list. We didn’t leave that store until she had every single thing on his list.

But it wasn’t just the toys Kara was worried about either. She knew without a doubt that the most valuable gift she could give her son was time. She sang Christmas carols to a CD player with him (The odd thing was her voice sounded better than I’d ever heard it. She didn’t sound sick at all.), we decorated the house and the tree, we went out to the duck pond to feed the ducks, we went to church regularly, we had our traditional duel with the empty Christmas wrapping paper tubes, and I fixed a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings for the entire family. Kara was so afraid her son would forget her, and she wanted so badly to stuff a lifetime of good memories into one Christmas for him.

Back before she’d gotten sick, Kara had given us a list of her own. She wanted a Thomas Kinkade Four Seasons Clock. I’m sure with everything that had happened since she’d asked for it, she thought we’d forgotten all about the clock, but we hadn’t. When she opened it, she cried. I have the clock now. It’s a constant reminder to me that time with our loved ones is one of the most precious gifts we can give them, and the memories we share is their gift to us. We can never take that for granted.

So hug your kids today, and go out and make a beautiful memory. You’ll be so glad you did. God bless you.

Teresa Pollard is from Richmond, Virginia, and was saved at a young age. She has a Master of Arts degree in English and Creative Writing from Hollins College, and has served as a Sunday School teacher and children’s worker for most of the last forty years. She is the co-author of Not Guilty and Not Ashamed, and the author of Tokens of Promise and Woman of Light, (due out from HopeSprings Books in October). Married for forty years, she was devastated by divorce and the death of her youngest daughter, but God has blessed her with a new home and another grandson, and she now resides in Dacula, Georgia. She blogs every Tuesday at http://teresatalkstaboo.wordpress.com. Follow her on Facebook at Teresa Pollard, Author.

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Woman of Light

Ehud, Israel’s great judge, is dead. He must have been out of his mind with sickness to prophesy that his granddaughter Deborah would judge Israel. Just who does she think she is? Doesn’t she know Sisera’s iron chariots threaten to annihilate the fledgling nation? And Barak? A poor man who can barely feed his own family. What kind of a God would choose two such improbable people to lead His people to battle?