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Today's Christian, November/December 2001
The 12 Days of Healing
A mystery giver brought balm for my grief
by Caryl A. Harvey
We needed a miracle; that much was obvious. The summer of 1995 had been glorious. … warm and full of picnics and evening walks with my husband, and full of family: my three girls, the grandkids, and my son. But in September, there was a knock on the door in the early morning hours.
"Mr. and Mrs. Harvey?" the young deputy sheriff had said. "There's no easy way to say this. There's been a shooting. It's Chad. He's dead."
Our 20-year-old son was dead—murdered just three blocks from our home. A crazed acquaintance, possibly in a jealous rage over his wife's attention to Chad, had shot him after a party. We stumbled through the funeral and the court appearances. We leafed through the sympathy cards and folded Chad's clothes to store them away. The nights grew colder, and the wind and snow came. Suddenly it was Christmas.
I was miserable. All around me there were carols being sung. Nativity scenes sprang up on lawns in our neighborhood, and the television schedule was punctuated with Christmas specials. I didn't even notice the TV though. I spent my evenings sitting on the couch crying and brooding. God had failed me. I had trusted him and he hadn't come through.
Oh, I didn't think he did it on purpose. He just wasn't able to keep that man from killing my son. But I wished he had been more honest about it to begin with and that he hadn't promised to answer my prayers if he couldn't do it. I stopped eating and lost 30 or more pounds. I began to be disappointed when I awoke in the mornings. … still alive and doomed to live through another day. I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to die. And it was Christmas.
Feeling the way I did about God, clutching such anger to me and hunkering down against the world, I don't know why I prayed that prayer. But one night I lifted my tear-fogged eyes to heaven and said, "God, if you care about me, I need a miracle. Otherwise, I think I'll probably die."
"What kind of a miracle did you ask God for?" my husband Charlie asked.
"I don't know, but I'll know it when it comes."
I had given up trying to sing, although I'd always loved it. Singing was Chad's thing. Music was Chad's thing. When he died, it seemed as though all the music evaporated from my dry soul. I went out to the cemetery to try to sing a lullaby to my boy, but only a small, sad squeak came out of my throat.
It all seemed so futile. I had faith that Chad was in God's hands. I knew that Chad hadn't ceased to exist, but I also knew that I couldn't get to him, and I wanted to. … desperately. People would tell me that someday I would see Chad again. I knew that; someday wasn't soon enough. Charlie reminded me that I still had him and the girls to live for. I knew what I had left, but what I had lost seemed to swallow everything.
Song on our doorstep
One evening before Christmas, I was sitting huddled on the living room couch when there was a knock on the door. My 13-year-old daughter Sarah went to answer it.
"There's no one there," Sarah said. "But look what I found."
She held up a silly-looking centerpiece of evergreen branches and green apples with a plastic bluebird perched on top. Attached was a note:
"On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
A partridge in a pear tree.
We couldn't find a partridge,
And our pear tree died,
So you have to settle for a
Bluebird in an apple tree."
On another piece of paper was a segment of Scripture about the announcement of John the Baptist's birth. Nothing else. No name or address or clue of where the package came from. We sat dumbfounded.
"Could someone be doing 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' for us?" I wondered aloud.
"I always hated that song," Sarah said.
I had, too. But this was different. We brainstormed, trying to guess who might be responsible for our surprise. We eliminated almost every one. Finally we gave up and went to bed. Sleep didn't come easily. There were too many questions.
The next night we sat in the living room waiting. The television was on and every time we thought we heard a sound, Charlie hit the mute button and we listened.
"This is really odd. I feel funny," I told Charlie. "I don't know what it is."
"I think it's anticipation," Charlie answered.
Yes, that's what it was. For so long we had been just surviving day to day, not looking forward to anything. Yet here we were, waiting for a knock on the door. It didn't come at 8 p.m., at 9 p.m., or at 10 p.m. None of us wanted to admit how disappointed we were. We made excuses to stay up just a little longer. Suddenly there was a loud rap at the front door and Sarah jumped up, nearly knocking over the coffee table.
She opened the door and pulled in another package. It was a box of Turtle candy with two Dove bars fastened to the top.
"On the second day of Christmas
My true love sent to me
Two turtledoves . …"
This time the Scripture told of the angel Gabriel's appearance to the Virgin Mary. Something began to stir inside me. I began to suspect that this was God's answer to my prayer. This was my miracle. Somehow he had laid it on someone's heart to do this thing that was so incredibly. … right.
What's next?
The third day of Christmas brought "three French hens" in the form of three Cornish hens (their French cousins had lost their passports, the note explained). The fourth day was the date for our support group meeting. We sat in the circle at Parents of Murdered Children and told them our story; how someone was going to such trouble to remind us of something I had forgotten. God still loved me. The group caught the excitement. Some of them were laughing and some cried. I think maybe they had forgotten, too.
We could barely wait to get home to see what the fourth day had brought us. When we drove up to our house though, we saw only our dog, Happy, lying on the porch, her eyes glinting in the light of the corner street lamp.
As Charlie reached the step, he kicked a small package. It was a cassette tape. Sarah raced to get her boom box and we slipped the tape in to play it.
"Bird, bird, bird's the word . …"
"It's the Tennessee Bird Walk . …"
"To everything there is a season . …" ( a song by The Byrds).
On top of the package was taped a telephone calling card. On the fourth day of Christmas. … four calling birds. We sang along as the songs blasted from the tape player at 2 a.m. Who needed sleep?
The surprises continued over the next eight nights.
Five golden rings were freshly fried doughnuts.
Six geese-a-laying were wonderful pastel chalk eggs.
On the seventh day, seven swans swam across the top of a blue-frosted cake.
Eight maids-a-milking became a Holstein cow candle.
Eighteen ginger-people decorated as dancers peeked from the package on the ninth day. It seems the Equal Opportunity Employment Act wouldn't allow them to send just "nine ladies dancing."
The tenth day of Christmas we found ten wooden leaping puppets on our doorstep.
On the eleventh, instead of eleven pipers piping, we found a James Galway tape, and on the twelfth day of Christmas there were twelve drums made out of cleverly frosted Oreos. Always, there was a portion of Scripture preparing us for the holiday to come.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I was looking forward to the next day and to life itself.
My miracle. When I couldn't talk to God, when I didn't even want to talk to him, he sent my miracle through someone else. Anonymously. We finally found out who our secret benefactors had been. We were grateful that they had been willing to let God use them.
My miracle. God used earthly hands to send it to me, but his fingerprints were all over it.
Editor's note: The identity of the generous gifts came on the last day with a signed card. It was the Acel Thacker family; Courtney Thacker was daughter Sarah's best friend. Even though the Thackers have moved away from Holyoke, their 12 days of Christmas tradition continues as other anonymous benefactors creatively reach out to needy families in the area. The Harveys are board members of Colorado's Front Range chapter of Parents of Murdered Children (www.pomc.com), the national organization that provides help to people who have lost loved ones in similar tragic situations.
Not at a Loss for Words
Books to comfort you and others
The Bible is the first book to turn to when you're struggling with the death of a loved one. Other helpful possibilities? Here's a list to get you started.
A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco)
Disrupted: Finding God in Illness and Loss, Virgil Fry (21st Century Christian)
I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye, Brook Noel and Pamela D. Blair (Champion Press Ltd.)
Take My Hand: Guiding Your Child Through Grief, Sharon Marshall with Jeff Johnson (Zondervan)
Tear Soup (a book for children and adults), Pat Schwiebert, Chuck DeKlyen, Taylor Bills (Perinatal Loss)
Grieving the Loss of a Loved One: A Devotional Companion, Kathe Wunnenberg (Zondervan)
Where Is God When It Hurts? Philip Yancey (Zondervan)
Hope for the Troubled Heart, Billy Graham (Bantam Books)
When the Bough Breaks, Judith R. Bernstein (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.
November/December 2001, Vol. 39, No. 6, Page 48
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