The Christmas Angel

“Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing
some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”
– Hebrews 13:2

To be honest, I didn’t want to go shopping at all the day I met an Angel in my local big box store. It was a cold, dreary day not long before Christmas with little to do. But my boys needed diapers, and my daughter’s Kindergarten class needed diaper wipes. Hooray! Another amazingly fun errand to run!

It took me an hour, but I finally got my two little ones dressed and tucked away in their car seats. I grabbed my bag and headed out the door, still undecided as to my final destination. One store wouldn’t take my credit card. The other option was the most popular (and crowded!) destination for all of Christmas. At last I settled on the closest big box store to my home – a dump, but somewhere I knew there wouldn’t be too many shoppers.

With the usual shouts of “Don’t touch that!” and “Come on! I SAID COME ON!” aimed at my wiggly boys, I quickly tossed five cartons of diapers and wipes into my cart. The usual routine … with just one more stop in the school supplies before I headed to the cash register.

It was there, somewhere between the crayons and the jumbo coloring books, that I saw HER out of the corner of my eye – a sixtyish grandmotherly-type, bald as a billiard ball, except for a thin fringe of grayed stubble. I did my best to concentrate on the crayons and not stare at the distinct ravages of cancer, praying with all my heart my sons wouldn’t point out the oddity.

She passed us by, and my shoulders sagged with relief. Mercifully, my 3 year old had been too caught up in crafts to notice. As one last treat for the boys, I took them over to the Christmas display, and we played and pointed out Christmas ornaments and toys to one another.

“Mommy! Mommy!” Colt, my 3-year-old, called. “Look at THIS!” He triumphantly held up a huge elf hat with a jingle bell on the top. Taking it in my hands, I brought it over to my 20 month old, Christian, who was stuck in the cart. With the press of a button, the hat wriggled to life, the jingle bell lashing back and forth. My boys began to smile, and I did too.

Reflexively, I placed the dancing hat on top of my head. I looked ridiculous, but in that moment, I didn’t care. I was going to make my boys laugh. Who cared what anyone else thought?

“Where did you get that hat?”

My eyes darted up from my toddler’s face and locked into her eyes. The cancer lady. Without skipping a beat, I lifted it off my head and plopped it on to hers. “Here, take mine!” I added cheerily.

Her eyes glowed. “This will be perfect for my friends at the cancer center! After six chemo treatments, my hair fell out, so I wore a pair of boxers on my head,” she explained. “This will surely make them smile.”

“How many treatments have you had?” I asked. I tried to keep my tone as normal and upbeat as possible.

“I just finished my tenth treatment,” she answered. “This is the first time I have been out of the house since January of last year. I call it my ‘getting out of prison day’. I chose this store to do my Christmas shopping because I can’t get sick, and I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of people around.”

My boys played happily amongst the fake Christmas trees. “Are the treatments working?” I ventured.

“They removed a seven pound tumor from my spleen,” she offered. “But now they say there is nothing more they can do. We just need to pray that the rest of the cancer goes into a coma and goes to sleep.”

We swapped a few cancer anecdotes, and ended with happy holiday wishes and smiles. My boys were getting antsy, so I began to turn the cart away, but my heart turned me back. “We just need to pray …” she had said. “I chose this store because there wouldn’t be a lot of people around”

I was around. I knew how to pray. God had used diapers to send me to this store, on this day, on the very moment that this dear woman had been released from the prison of her cancer treatments. He had sent me there for more than just to find and wear a silly jingle bell hat -- I still had a job yet to do.

I walked quickly back to her side. “Would you mind if I said a prayer for you?” I asked. “Right here?”

“I would love that,” she smiled. We bowed our heads, closed our eyes, and I wrapped my arms around this wonderful woman and prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, a prayer for healing, a prayer for peace in the name of Jesus Christ.

I have rarely felt an emotional and spiritual connection that strong emanating from another human being. In that moment, God was there – we could both feel the power of His love filling us to overflowing. Our eyes filled with tears, and we gave one another one last, strong hug.

I struggled to refrain from openly weeping in the store as I completed my shopping. The kindness of God overwhelmed me. How kind of Him to greet that dear woman with a hug and a prayer on the day of her freedom. How kind of Him to let me be touched by an Angel in the diaper aisle.

The Sleepwalkers

Head aching, puffy eyes half-closed, I paced the moonlit floor with my newborn son. Patted. Twisted. Hummed. Resented my hard-working husband’s sleeping form. Simmered in anger that the baby would not JUST GO BACK TO SLEEP! Hadn’t I just fed him one hour ago? Or was it two …

I peered through the blinds at our quiet street, washed in orange-yellow haze of the lamplight. I felt so alone. Who else could possibly be awake at 3 a.m., wearily soothing a fussy baby?

But then, as I looked up at the moon, the answer came. My friend had given birth a week after me. Twenty minutes across town, just like me, there was another woman pacing the floors, looking out at the stars, and trying to sooth her baby to sleep. And suddenly, I felt a surge of hope.

“When you walk the floors late at night with your baby girl, pray for me,” I told her the very next week. “And I’ll do the same for you. You aren’t alone in this. We can do this together.” And we did.

Less than two years later, both my friend and I were blessed with newborns again. The struggle of raising two little ones so close together in age pushed us to our limits. But together, as we paced and prayed, we grew strong.

At our mid-week Bible Study, a new mom came in. She tried to act like she had it all together, but my friend and I could see by her face that sleepless nights were taking its toll. “When I had my first child, I felt so alone,” my friend encouraged her. “But Katherine told me that every night – whenever her baby was awake -- she would pray for me. And she asked me to pray for her.” My friend and I glanced at one another, our eyes full of immediate understanding. “It meant so much to me to know I was not alone.

“Tonight, as we all walk the floors with our babies, we’ll pray for you too,” she added. “And we’ll all make it through together. You’ll see.”

It took 19 months for my second son to sleep through the night. It was one of the hardest challenges of my life. But I made it with my sanity intact because God sent me other moms – physically far, spiritually near – to pray me through, hour by hour, night by night.

And now, we often look back and tell other new moms our greatest secret weapon: If you pray together, you will never feel alone.