With the holidays right around the corner, the annual tradition of sending Christmas cards to friends and family, near and far, just might include a Christmas letter.
Some folks include a letter with their Christmas cards. It’s sort of a recap of the year…highs and lows, births, deaths, marriages, etc.
About thirty years ago a friend of mine shared a Christmas letter with me that she received in one of her Christmas cards.
The letter was broken down by months, starting with January, and each for month there was a sentence or two about something that occurred within the family who sent the card.
I had to read it twice and was dumbfounded how many bad things happened to this family in one year.
Thinking it must be a joke, I asked my friend who received this letter if she knows for a fact that all of these things happened. She assured me they all happened and followed that up with ‘if it weren’t for bad luck they’d have no luck at all’.
Here’s just a few things they shared with family and friends:
~Someone had two surgeries for glaucoma and both were unsuccessful
~This same individual had another surgery due to complications from the first two glaucoma surgeries which then caused an eye to collapse and left him totally blind.
~There was a wedding in the family and apparently it was for a more mature couple. The groom had already had five open heart surgeries, forty catheterizations, and numerous angioplasties. The pastor officiating the ceremony made a comment that they were lucky it was a wedding and not a funeral.
~Another relative had heart surgery and had complications with her legs.
~Another relative was stabbed over two hundred times by her housekeeper of twenty years. Fingers and nose almost cut off, heart nicked, lung and liver punctured, and numerous other injuries. The housekeeper was found in another city three weeks later.
~The woman who was stabbed, her husband had a benign tumor the size of a grapefruit removed from his sinuses.
~And last but not least, another relative is receiving chemo for pancreatic cancer.
The letter is closed out by the writers thanking God for all their blessings.
Now, that my friends, is called faith and optimism!
Personally I would not have sent a letter like that in a Christmas card but obviously these folks felt comfortable sharing all of that. I respect that.
It’s a little early but Merry Christmas!
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