Christmas Memories # 20

   
     A few years back, our extended family was going through a crisis of sorts. The weather that Christmas break was unseasonably pleasant, with moderate temperatures, sunny skies, and an occasional  slight breeze.  For Christmas that year, I asked Phil and David if I could have the present of an hour just to myself on Christmas day.  I wanted to go to the Oasis, a nearby Christian retreat area  that had hiking trails, a pond, and some prayer decks  because I really felt the need to get my spiritual act together - turmoil and I don't do well together.  Looking back, I'm sure that as uptight as I was that holiday, Phil and David were only too  happy to give me some time alone and  as I recall they both told me not to hurry but  to take all the time I wanted. :)
    I still remember going to the Oasis on Christmas day, following the trail to my favorite prayer deck and then  just sitting there, reading and praying until I was calm and had a deep inner joy - a real awareness of the fact that we weren't going it alone.  Later that evening, we got more bad news - a friend was in harm's way but there was no clear-cut way to help that person. It was like watching a train derailment from afar.

   As we considered our options, I ended up going back to the Oasis for the next three mornings, this time in even greater turmoil  than  before - basically a basket case of nerves.    It still amazes me how quickly things had changed for us in just 24 hours, and on Christmas, no less.  In my journal Christmas afternoon, I had written down that  I felt like I could almost touch God and feel His arms of love around me.  The very next morning, there I was back on my favorite prayer deck but this time lying flat out on the wooden slats, crying out to God in what could only be described as angst.
  For  three mornings,  I begged God for wisdom, for help, and for Him to intervene in my friend's situation.  At the end of that first agonizing prayer time, I felt that He was telling me to trust Him,  that He would take care of it.  I left with a measure of peace but before the day was over, I found myself thinking, "But what if that assurance is not really from Him? What if I just think that is what He's telling me because that is what I want to hear?"  At the time, I felt my friend's life could very well end up hanging in the balance and I was afraid that if I did nothing, that might tip the scales in the wrong direction.
   So I went back the next day, again full of anxiety, again begging God to do something.  At the end of that prayer time, He left me with the same message and Scripture to confirm it - that I was to trust Him; He would take care of it.
  By the end of that day, however, I was once more second-guessing what I thought He had impressed upon me and the next morning I set out once again with  some anxiety.  I  hiked the trails until I came to my "place" where I  lay flat out on the wooden platform, crying out to God to help my friend and to make His will clear, reminding Him what was at stake (as if He didn't know!)
  For the third time, He impressed on my heart that I was to trust Him and He would take care of the situation.  For the third time He gave me Scripture to confirm this and for the third time, He gave me peace. Only this time, there was a finality about the peace, a sense  of Him saying,  "We're done chasing this rabbit; I've told you that I will take care of it and I will.  Now get up from here, go forward in faith and  trust My word."
    Never again, in the ensuing months of this crisis,  did I ever  have that crushing sense of anxiety. He had taken it from me.  And  although it would be six more months before we could see how the Lord kept His word, the bottom line is that He did keep it and the danger to my friend was eventually removed.
  About the time I started out on that faith journey, our preacher shared something from Charles Spurgeon's writings; basically that God's promises should be treated like personal checks.     Spurgeon was saying that if we have a definite promise from God (and we're absolutely sure it's meant for us), then  we should take it to God each day, expecting Him to cash it.  Our pastor said that too many times, we take God's promises to Heaven's "bank", lay the "personal" check down on the bank teller's window, so to speak,  and then grab it right back - something we would never do with a real check  here on earth.  By doing that, the Christian is  saying, "God, here is the promise You gave me. I'm laying it before You and asking You to cash it today if this is the right day." And then, before  more than a few seconds have gone by, our tune has changed to "Okay, God. Time's up. I knew You weren't going to make good on this promise. But that's okay. It's all good..." And we quit living by faith.
  For several months, our family presented the "check"  God had given us to Heaven's Bank each morning, expecting that if this was the right day, He would cash it. Later, we found out that He had taken care of the situation in a way we could never have envisioned and so we learned that He keeps His promises today  just as He has throughout the centuries.
  The biggest promise He has ever  kept was 2,000 years in the coming. In Genesis 3, God says that He will send the seed of a woman to crush Satan's head.  Later the prophets would be more specific and foretell the coming of the Messiah who would save man from his sins.
   And that is the promise kept that we celebrate at Christmas time. And that is the hope that we sing about in churches all around the world more than 2,000 years after the birth of Christ:  that God has not forgotten us and He keeps His promises, large and small.

* Note: at the time of this event,  the Oasis Retreat was open to religious organizations and/or individuals who just wanted to get away for a bit, pretty much open to the public.   For the past several years, it has been closed to the public and is privately owned. I still miss going out there but am glad it was once available for picnics, hiking,  and such.  Lots of good memories.

Christmas Memories # 19

  Continuing with lessons ornaments have taught me:)

Lesson # 2.  Patience...  One year I bought a craft kit for about $2.00.  I was in my twenties at the time, working full time but unmarried.  The  kit had plastic suncatchers in the form of Peanuts characters and I decided that since I didn't have a lot of money, these would make perfect (token) Christmas gifts to my friends and acquaintances. It was a paint-by-number craft so all I had to do was follow the directions and - voila! Cheap gifts enhanced by love.   It didn't turn out to be as simple as that and it took me two or three tries before I figured out how to get the paint to stick where I wanted it and how long to let them dry before picking them up...:(   Then, as I worked on them, somehow my list of people who might like one kept growing; well,  I didn't want to leave anyone out!  Sooo.. I kept going back and  buying more  kits, bringing them home  and then sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the t.v., watching Christmas shows while I  painstakingly painting those suncatchers.  Finally,  I had  a whopping 40 of them!  (I think my mom was worried that maybe I had become addicted to the paint or something... )  When I first started out, doing one set seemed daunting to me.  But over time, like the snail (and with the help of Christmas movie re-runs) I made it through a lot more of those than I could ever have dreamed. And I really enjoyed doing it.

        At another Christmas around the same time, I had a wonderful answer to prayer - although it may not have been so wonderful to others... My brother was home on a short furlough for a week or so but I had to work. They were predicting bad weather so I'm afraid I prayed that the roads would be bad enough that the schools would close.  And sure enough, we had an ice storm which caused  Christmas break to start about 3 days earlier than it was supposed to - I got to spend more time with Glen than I expected!  However, there's not much to do when you are iced in. (And this was the year when we could step out onto the yard and see nothing but solid white and occasionally hear a loud cracking noise that seemed to issue from some subterranean icy depth.)   Mom had gotten us some craft kits that she thought were paint by number but they weren't. Instead, they were made up of hundreds and hundreds of little bits of colored crystals that you had to put into metal frames and then melt at low temperature in the oven.  Those little bits of color were about the size of tiny candy sprinkles that go on cakes.  However, if we put even one little piece in the wrong tray, once it was in the oven, that little speck would grow until it was unmistakably noticeable.
      We were doing Disney characters so you could hear us, as we  pulled out the first few pieces,lamenting  the fact that Goofy's face looked like garbage because, unknown to us, one little speck of green had gotten mixed up with the beige colors. WE finally resorted to using tweezers to pick up the colored bits and often ended up in good-natured arguing as one or the other insisted that a speck of color had gone astray as we were dropping them in.  We didn't do the things we had planned on doing that holiday but we actually had a great time and when the ice finally melted, we had made some neat memories.  Memories that involved, like the Peanuts sun-catchers, a lot of time and patience.

Christmas Memories # 18

     Over the years I've learned a few lessons from ornaments ;)  Or tried to anyway... =/  These plastic, wooden,  decorations can't speak and yet, a few of them do - at least to me.

    Lesson # 1. Humility...  When Hallmark first started coming out with Barbie ornaments and cartoon ornaments, I sort of stuck my nose up in the air.  Hmmmphh.. They are way too expensive and have nothing to do with the true spirit of Christmas!  A Barbie doll?  Come on!  Get real!  I don't think we're talking Mary and Joseph here!   And then, guess what?  In 1995, they came out with two ornaments that I unashamedly fell in love with and just had to have!  One was Thomas the Tank Engine.  How traditional is that - a plastic blue train with a smiley face on it???  But it was David's favorite toy and so I had to have it on my tree.  The other one was even less Christmassy.  I have to admit I purchased one of Olive Oil holding Sweet Pea in her arms:)  This one had even more sentimental meaning for me.  When I stayed with my grandparents, I didn't like to go to bed, of course.  So after they finally got me into my bed, my grandfather would holler out from his bedroom, "Good-night, Olive Oil!"  And I would yell back, "Good-night, Popeye!" and start giggling.  At that time he knew that I considered Olive Oil the height of glamorous femininity so that was his pet name for me.  He died in April 1960 on my mom's birthday and his last words  to her were, "Take care of my little girl and tell Olive Oil I love her."  You can be sure Thomas the Tank and Olive Oil are on my tree every year even though, yes, they have little or nothing to do with traditional Christmas tree ornaments and yes, they were probably overpriced.

Christmas Memories # 17

                                                         
      When I was in junior high we lived out in a rural area and even though book stores were far away, sometimes I could order paperbacks through the school.  One year I ordered The Diary of Anne Frank and had trouble putting it down.  In fact, I stuck it inside my Bible during Wed. night church service  and read it surreptitiously. (Another trick I had was to put a quilt at the bottom of my bedroom door to block out light and then read with a flashlight into the wee hours of the morning. That's how I read George Orwell's Animal Farm and also James Michener's  Sayonara.   The only problem with both books was that as I was finishing each one, I  got busted.  I think it was my uncontrollable sobbing at the end of the books that gave me away.)  At any rate, as  soon as I opened Anne Frank's book and started reading the entries in her diary, I knew I wanted a diary of my own.
     Although it was high on my Christmas list, as the big day  approached  I had the distinct impression that I wasn't going to get one.  The two local stores didn't carry them for sure.  However, on Christmas Eve, at the last minute,  my brother drove to the nearest city  and bought one for me - a five-year diary with a red cover and a key  lock. To me, it was a thing of beauty, something to behold!  Like Anne's diary, this would carry all the secrets of my heart. Throughout Christmas day, I kept the diary by my side and  as for the key, mom put it on a necklace so that I could wear it around my neck.
    I  spent Christmas night at my grandmother's house - by this time she had been a widow for several years and although she waited on me hand-and-foot, she had her peculiarities.  Definitely.
   For one thing, she loved to listen in on the party line  - for those who don't know, that's when several families share the same telephone line which means it's very easy to listen in on other people's conversations.
   And I have to say that Grandma was really, really good at this.  In her defense, I would also have to say that most of her friends did the same.  If they weren't watching the afternoon soap operas such as As the World Turns and Search for Tomorrow, they  were almost certainly eavesdropping on other people's conversations or calling each other up to share the newest piece of juicy gossip.
    Going back to the Christmas when I got my beloved diary, I made the mistake of taking it to my grandmother's house that night where I proceeded to make  my first entry before locking it up.  Then I put the chain around my neck with the key dangling from it, knowing it was securely fastened. When I woke up the next morning, the chain was still fastened around my neck but.. the key was gone!   I was some kind of ticked!!  Of course, I accused my grandmother of taking my key and of course, she denied it. (But we were the only two people in the house that night... soooo...)   When I insisted the chain couldn't have unclasped itself and then fastened itself back, she did what she always did when she was caught red-handed, she became extremely hard of hearing, making any further conversation a moot point.
   I never did get my key back and my dad had to cut the strap so that I could open the diary to write in it.  To this day,  I wonder what my grandmother could have been thinking.  First, if she was going to take the key, it seems to me it would have been a lot better to have left the chain unfastened.  Having it still secured around my neck was sort of a dead tip-off as to what had happened:)
    Second, I had no life...  Seriously...   I was a gangly  twelve-year-old, living out in the middle of nowhere and our nearest neighbor was a sixty-year-old woman who liked to grow flowers. If I went anywhere by myself, I rode my bike or  walked.  I was a wall-flower at school and a bookworm at home. I mean passion was just a word in the dictionary to me back then, if I even knew it at all...  What could she have ever hoped to find in my diary that could possibly rival the local party line or As the World Turns?
     At any rate, it all worked out from my perspective. I simply never took my diary back to my grandmother's house and at home, although I felt like my privacy would be respected, I kept the little volume in a hiding place and managed to get  my full five-years worth of enjoyment out of it.
     I've never seen a Christmas card featuring a grandmother swiping her granddaughter's new diary key on Christmas night.  The truth is, most every family has 'em - people who genuinely love you but who drive you crazy from time to time and even can, on occasion, make you spitting mad.  In the middle of the holly and the ivy, no less.
   And my grandmother really did love me.  She cooked my favorite foods, sewed clothes for me (and my dolls), played games with me, cleaned up after me, and saw me through all the contagious childhood diseases such as chicken pox, measles, and mumps.
   As a friend of mine likes to say, if you think your family doesn't have any hard-to-get along-with characters in it, that's probably because you are the eccentric character in your family that everyone else complains about from time to time:).
   Christmas is a time to enjoy family as much as you can, not the way it's presented in the cards, carols, and stories but the way it really is, giving as much slack as you can when you can.  One thing about eccentric characters:  when they are gone, you really miss them.
   Here's hoping you and your family have a great Christmas!

Christmas Memories # 16

   

 I'll be writing this on the fly, as we say in the old South, since I have a lot to do today.  Christmas brings such hectic to-do lists but it's not (always:) a bad thing!  The general anticipation of what is coming, the feeling that even as the pace becomes more frantic, we are headed towards something wonderful - a "down" day when normal things suddenly  come to a halt and our priorities are  focused on warmth, fellowship, and fun instead of on work, to-do lists, and ... more work!
    Another Christmas memory came back to me last night and it centered around ... Cookie Monster...   When David was young, we had a furry blue hand puppet that seemed to be his personal confidante.   When David was upset or feeling bad, Phil could put Cookie Monster onto his hand, raise his voice a notch or two, and then magically, Cookie would start talking to David.  Somehow, it always made him feel better. (David.. not Cookie...Ha!)
   We could assure David that he was going to be fine or we could try to make him laugh but.. Cookie Monster could really achieve those objectives!  And if something was bothering David, we could ask him questions but he usually preferred to confide in his furry blue friend:)
  It's amazing how children respond to puppets!  Over the years, our family worked in puppet ministry - especially Phil and David (when he was older...) and whenever the puppet booth was set up at church, little kids would come up to the booth and try to reach up and touch  the puppets bending over it, looking down at them.  (Sometimes Phil would have to  be semi-stern in his high squeaky voice and say, "Boys and girls!  Don't touch!  Owwww... don't pull on my ears or my nose!  That hurts! ;)  They were simply enchanted by these furry animals come alive!
  Because my brother saw that Phil was good with puppets and because he is generous, Glen spent weeks one Christmas season tracking down various puppets of all kinds - he was truly on a mission! He garnered quite a collection -  small ones that fit on the back of the hand like bumble bees and lady bugs (my favorites), then the type of hand puppets that we grew up with - simple ones that covered the hand and the wrist, and then much larger ones, like the ones the church used.  That Christmas, we had a puppet bonanza that none of us have forgotten!  It was just so neat to keep pulling puppets out of their wrappings only to find more were hiding.   For a while, David was the envy of all the kids on the block:)  And we used them!  At church, wherever..
  I even took some of those puppets to school where my "big kids" (teens) would write out skits and then climb under a table and hold the puppets up over the table so that the skits were "read" by great leaders such as  Frederick the Great (who looked suspiciously like a horse) or Queen Elizabeth I  (who looked an awful lot like... a pig..)  Nothing personal intended - we just didn't have  a lot of   people puppets, we mostly just  had animals.
  When I think about Christmas, I am acutely aware that God sent us the best gift that He could possibly have chosen: His Son.  As I've already indicated, He wrapped His Son up in human form (with God, nothing is impossible - how Christ became flesh is a divine mystery, not a biological one) and sent Him to live for us and die for us, to pay for our sins.
  But the gift doesn't really stop there.  Colossians 1:27 says that God's plan is ... Christ in us, the hope of glory.  That's it.  That's His plan.  Christ living through us, using our hands, feet, voices, hearts, minds to reach out to others.
   Going back to the puppet ministry days -of which we were not that good but we had a lot of fun with it - we noticed that the kids loved it when Cookie Monster would interrupt Phil or myself, catch us "off guard" and contradict us!  That  would always send the little ones into peals of laughter.
   But what if those limp, cloth-bodied creatures could suddenly think and speak on their own and they actually did start to contradict us.. and really mean it?  Hang with me here -I know this is evolving into a weird blog....! But what if they wanted Phil and I to empower them, since they were weak, yet at the same time, they wanted to call the shots?
  Christ in us, the hope of glory... Col. 1:27b
  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me..  Phil 4:13
  Christ has become to me wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption  I Cor. 1:30
   In Him, I have been made complete  Col. 2:10
  Today I'm going to go forward by faith, knowing that Christ lives in me, believing that as I count on His wisdom, His goodness and am open to His agenda, I am indeed complete and can do all things through Him.
   What a gift!

Christmas Memories # 15

     This Christmas is different from past Christmases.  For one thing, we have exercise equipment everywhere and it's not uncommon to find David or one of his friends lifting weights or even  hanging from a door frame as they do chin-ups, which can be unnerving, by the way, to walk out into our short hallway and see a pair of blue-jeaned legs swinging in mid air...  I remember the days (long gone now) when I was the one jogging, riding bicycles, etc and David was upset because he had to stay with his dad because his little legs couldn't keep up with me.  Now I huff and puff as I walk around the block, trying to keep up with him!
      As I get ready to celebrate my 57th Christmas, I find myself choosing which body part I want to favor as  I go out shopping. Now, for example, if I don't want my knees to hurt, I wear the flat K-Mart version of Uggs (that cost about 16.00.. ) when I shop.    If I don't want my feet to hurt, on the other hand, I wear my New Balance (which cost considerably more than 16 bucks..).  In the evenings, instead of hitting the malls, I wrap up in an open blanket with sleeves and a pocket (who would have ever thought??) and then wrap a microwaveable terry cloth something or other around my neck.  Pure bliss!!!
     When I hit my forties, I was going through a time of transition and it wasn't that easy for me.   I struggled with  Christmas especially  because my mom was gone and also because I  could look in the mirror and see her staring back at me... which was kind of scary!   I remember that this whole aging issue really came home to me one Christmas Eve as I was walking through the house  in a housecoat and slippers, trying to make sure the cornbread would be dry enough for the stuffing the next day, checking on the fruit jello pudding to see if it was gelling...  while everyone else was at a party.  That was sooooo my mom!  What was happening here? It was like I had somehow inadvertently stepped into the Twilight zone of Christmases past!  Agghhh!  I didn't want to be the menopausal, corn-bread stuffing maker in our family!  It really hit me that I still wanted to be young and fairly carefree - especially on holidays.
     Now I'm in transition again but I don't feel unhappy with my  age or the things I have to do, can't do, etc.    Oddly enough, I'm pretty contented and accepting of the fact that sixty is just around the corner.  The only thing I can think of to explain the difference is that Paul had it right when he wrote in II Cor. 4:16 - 18   "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."   Maybe it would be nice to be young, lithe, and physically strong again. But even though that's not going to happen, I understand that I have an inner strength that can grow and keep on growing even as my physical body wears out.
       However, just as David has had to build up his physical muscles over the years, going from weak to strong, I have had  to develop some spiritual "muscle" over the years and I still have to work to maintain that.  Although everyone is probably tired of hearing it, Scripture memory has been and is a huge part of my "spiritual building program".
    As I said in my previous blog, Christmas Eve of '83 was when I really had a strong desire to memorize a whole chapter in the Bible.   Before that time, I was memorizing Scriptures but I was pretty "weak" at it.  Sometimes I might take 2 or 3 weeks to do one verse, baby steps so to speak.  If I thought a verse was too long, honestly,  I'd look for a short one:)  (Jesus wept... For we walk by faith not by sight... I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me... Just ask me - I probably know them all!)  And then there would be long stretches where I did little Bible study of any type at all.
   Going back a year in time to 1982, I remember that we  had an unusually stormy  November and December and that my fear of storms  helped keep my spiritual nose to the grindstone:)  The night before Thanksgiving we actually had tornado alerts out and I was really scared.. . so frightened that I messed up while trying to  make my first Boston Cream Cake.   (I was listening to the weather reports, spassed out  and totally forgot to put the oil in... I have to say... it was a pretty solid cake...)  Also that Thanksgiving Eve, I talked to a friend on the phone, heard him say good-night to his father, and then learned the next day that his dad had died suddenly in the night from a heart attack. At the time, I wondered if the tornado alerts and the sudden changes in barometric pressure could have affected his heart - have no clue, it was just a thought that stayed with me over the next few weeks as our weather continued to fluctuate between  highs and lows.
   Since I was fearful, I did what  I could to manage my stress and  I remember praying frequently that the weather would get cold and stay that way just so that we wouldn't have any more storms. However,this is Arkansas... and  on Christmas Eve we once again  had all kinds of weather alerts going out over the television and radio.  In fact, that night  an F4 tornado traveled from Arkansas to Missouri killing 3 people. It seemed surreal that both holidays would be marred by severe weather.
   I also remember standing in a large warehouse-like grocery store Christmas Eve afternoon, knowing full well that the weather could turn really nasty.  While I waited on mom to finish her shopping, I pulled out my memory cards. I had been working on Romans 4:20-21 for weeks but couldn't seem to get it down.  It was too long, too convoluted and I had decided to give up on it.
   But what else was there to do besides worry about the weather while I waited?  So I dragged out the cards,   leaned against the wall and   doggedly started with the first words, "Yet with respect to the promise of God..."    Ever so often I would stop and complain to God that I had Teflon brain again and was getting nowhere.  I may have even given Him some pointers on how to edit that passage to make it more practical... ha!
   Now almost thirty years later, those verses have become my "life verses" - ones that I've lived by and relied on time and time again - more than any other Scripture passages that I've learned. When I'm stressed, they are the first verses that come to mind. And three different times over the last decades, I've gone to bed stressed only to wake up with those verses somehow incorporated into my dreams.. not kidding.
  What if I had given up on Christmas Eve back in 1982? What if I had not been so stressed that in desperation, I forced myself to keep going over and over those verses? What if I had not prayed and asked God to help me with those two impossible-to-memorize verses?
   What if I 'd never read the first biography of Dawson Trotman? Or my brother had never become involved in Navigators and then introduced me to their memory program?
   I guess I'm saying, if I had just given up in Dec. of 1982, would I have been even thinking about trying to do James 1 on Christmas Eve in 1983?
   Spiritual strength like physical strength grows as we develop it.  And it's neat to be able to look back at past Christmases and see not only physical and emotional mile markers but also spiritual ones as well.
   

Christmas Memories # 14

     I have read that  Elizabeth I of England once told the King of Spain that she was a weak woman and therefore entitled to change her mind (or words to that effect).  I'm thinking that if it worked for her, it might work for me... :)  I do want to share another memory along the lines of what I shared in yesterday's blog, but as we were putting out Christmas stuff yesterday (finally!!!), another memory came to mind and  at my age, when they come along you have to write them down before they leave again... So I'm going to shelve yesterday's memory track until another day.
    When David was about 5 years old, we used to watch a battery-operated Christmas train go around this extremely short, plastic track - it was on sale at a nearby store. We both wanted it but it was too expensive for our Christmas budget back then - we had presents to buy, turkeys to purchase, yada, yada....  But then one day we saw a 50% sale sign near the train and it was a couple of weeks still before Christmas.  I asked a store employee if the train was included and he said he didn't think it was.  However, he got the manager, who looked at David and looked at the train and then said, "Well, technically it's not included in the sale items but ... I'm going to go ahead and give you the discount."  We were thrilled!
    We came home and Phil set it up under the tree where David watched it's short journey to no-where and back  again, over and over. It was a huge success!  A few nights later, David was in his room when Phil and I heard this tremendous screeching and yelling - a horrible commotion. Then David came running out of his room, grabbed his Play-Skool plastic chair, shoved it in the corner and sat down facing the wall, looking scared as all get-out.
    I ran into his bedroom where this awful commotion was still going on, only to see the cat frantically racing  around the room with the battery operated Christmas train stuck to the fur on its back, still merrily playing its tinny carols.  The cat was not a happy camper...  I couldn't even get near the  cat so I started yelling for Phil. He ran into the room, shut the door to keep the cat in there and finally managed to hold the animal still long enough to untangle the train from its fur.
    Phil didn't go unscathed in this rescue operation and as soon as the cat was freed from the train, he demanded to know how in the heck the train got on the cat's back in the first place.  David was still scared to death but he was also puzzled.  How could anyone not figure that one out?  To him, it was so obvious - you have a battery-operated train that plays Christmas music and a cat that normally lets you drag it around the house tail over head - how could anyone resist the opportunity to run  the choo-choo over the cat's back??? And who would have ever thought that it would get stuck in the (long-haired ..) cat's fur???
   Again, as I stated in an earlier blog the phrase "seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child" has more than one meaning.... ;)  If you have kids, grand kids, nieces, nephews, neighbor's kids, whatever -  and they are driving you crazy and/or doing things that seem to test your patience as well as age you rapidly - hang in there - someday you'll pull out a Christmas decoration and the you did what???!!!  holiday  moments of today will be great memories.