Goodbye Fat Charley

Fat Charley has left the building! Yes, it is true, Fat Charley was sadly undressed of all of our precious Christmas ornaments, the snowflakes, the angel(Beth) on top, the garland, and the lights. We are sad to see him go, we grew fond of him through all his hard times falling over in the floor. My daughter, who had reservations from the start and wanted another tree, asked, " Why do we have to get rid of Fat Charley?" Why, oh why? Maybe, because Fat Charley had no roots and no good soil to sustain him past this Christmas season. Thank goodness our roots can not be cut! If we are rooted in the Lord, our Lord will feed us living water! I am so grateful for that!

Rom 11:18 ... You are just a branch; you don't support the roots---the roots support you.

Once Fat Charley was out of the house, I swept up two full dustpans of Fat Charley's needles. Poor Fat Charley, he was going bald. How embarrassing!

My Christmas Miracle

Off to the store I went with a grocery list in hand. Toilet paper topped the list since we only had half rolls in each bathroom with no backup and I had work the next day. I hopped in my car and pulled out of the drive and had just gotten around the corner when I felt gravel under the right tires and lost control of the car. I struggled to get the car under control and just as I thought I had, the car whipped away from me, spinning backwards towards a deep ditch. All I could think was the ditch was coming and my car would flip. The car was tilting and I was bracing myself for the flip, when the car stopped. I was alive, the car was sideways, and I was shaking so hard that I couldn't think straight. I was afraid to move, what if the car tipped and flipped? So I sat still and reached for my phone. As I was thanking God, I called home. I knew my husband was in the garage with his ear buds in and my daughter had been finishing her bath so of course I got the answering machine. I left a message-what else! I am so glad God does not have an answering machine! I called again as I was thanking God, my daughter picked up wanting to know the details of the conversation I was planning to have with her DAD! I finally convinced her to give the phone to my husband without telling her anything so I could hear the sweet noble calming voice of my husband.
"I'm scared!" I said as calmly as I could without crying. I went on to tell him that I was sideways in a ditch and it was a miracle I did not flip. But, I was stuck! I couldn't get out, I had no footing. If I opened the door, the car would either flip or I would fall into the deep ditch. I waited as cars zoomed past in the night, waiting for my husband to rescue me. I could hear voices and rolled down my window, two men had stopped to make sure I was okay. They waited with me until my husband arrived, helped me get out of the car from the other side, and helped my husband get the car out of the ditch. Chivalry is not dead! Thank you fellas!


I had several angels that night, the one that God sent to keep me from flipping over in a ditch where I may have been hurt or even killed and probably not found for several days, and the wonderful men that he sent that stopped to help a damsel in distress!


I have to tell you, I felt like Fat Charley in my last post. I lost my footing but God picked me up, dusted me off, and I walked away shaking and praising God without a scratch on me! It sure felt good to stand on good solid soil! I told my daughter that God's angel helped to stop my car from flipping and that He was watching over me. Over all of us. According to my husband, we are all going to church Sunday to thank the BIG GUY! This has been my Christmas miracle! What's yours?

I must have read this scripture twenty times that night....

If you make the Most High you dwelling--

even the LORD, who is my refuge--

then no harm will befall you,

no disaster will come near your tent.

For he will command his angels

concerning you

to gaurd you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot

against a stone.

Psalm 91:9-12

Fat Charley isn't fat, he is fluffy!

Fachrist

Fat Charley fell over again! I stumbled out of bed this morning, stepped over the dog sleeping in the middle of the hallway, and made my way to the little girls room about 4am. I heard a huge crash and the sound of ornaments breaking as I rushed in the living room with the dog right behind me. Fat Charley was in the floor and water was reaching to the far corners quickly. I made a mad dash to stand Fat Charley up, almost slipping in the water as I dodged the ornaments on the floor. My husband heard me holler for him and came calmly considering it was the middle of the night (at least for a Sunday morning) and brought in towels and offered to hold the tree while I wiped water and investigated the problem underneath Fat Charley. Once I finally got some water sopped up, I flipped over like a mechanic under a car in order to see the stand and Fat Charleys trunk. You know, I found that Fat Charley has some body image issues, Fat Charley is really skinny. He isn't fat, he is fluffy with long arms. His trunk is so small that all four screws were completely screwed in and two of them were almost touching. He just slipped out! Now he is one of the fattest trees with the skinniest trunks I have ever seen. I don't know what kept a good wind from blowing him right over at his Christmas tree farm, except that he had a purpose to be a Christmas tree for our family as we celebrate Jesus' birth. So we got our Fat Charley up and tied him with strips of fabric to the tree stand so that he would have extra support and hopefully won't fall over again. My husband picked up the ornaments and put them in a basket until morning. I found one that was broken, but I glued it back together. My daughter found Rudolph still hanging on the tree without ears or a tail(we can't find them) but she loves him still.

Fat Charley, like many of us, is not perfect. Fat Charley like us, may look put together with our ornaments and lights shiny and bright, but we may feel like our feet are standing in water and we are going to slip out of our tree stand at any moment. Then we slip, our ornaments and garland fall off or break, and we are covered with the water we slipped in and needles are covering the floor. I can only imagine how humiliating this is for a Christmas tree, it is even worse for us prideful humans. Even though my husband and I were able to pick Fat Charley up off the ground, man can't always fix what is wrong with man,only God can. God can pick up the pieces, He can dust you off, dry you off, straighten your garland, and put your ornaments back together. He will make you a new creation, a person stronger and closer to Him.

Only He can give you a firm foundation that is not dependent upon screws and strips of cloth, He will have you standing on good solid soil!

Bah Humbug

"Bah Humbug"Saturday's party left all of us exhausted. I admit it, I was grumpy and sore Sunday morning, so I stayed in bed. As I laid there in my bah humbug mood, I remembered the pastor preaching last Sunday about being too tired to come to church during the Christmas season because of all the other stuff going on. I thought I would go but I didn't get very far. I could barely stand, my back hurt, my legs hurt, and I still had the headache that I had gotten immediately after the party the afternoon before. So home we stayed because Haley was tired too. She however got a burst of energy and my husband took her for a bike ride, which was later regretted(They took 2 loops which is about 3.5 miles). I stayed home and went back to bed. When they came back, the bah humbugs were in the house again! They just come in when you are not looking. We were growling and grumping like we were Scrooge himself! The house was a mess and we still needed to make room for our tree.

We finally made it out of the house clean and neat to go find our tree with camera in hand. I look forward to finding a tree each year and the pictures that come along with it. I discovered when people are tired and cranky the pictures tend to reflect it.

We arrived at the place Haley had chosen to look for a tree. We walked up and they had a giant Santa Claus that you could take pictures with and we got a few. We were then off to hunt for our special tree. Haley took off, scampering down the aisles of trees and finding pine cones on the floor along the way. She found the manger scene and we took a few pictures, then she saw it. She saw the tree that she wanted-love at first site with a tree. She was stroking the branches and bonding with the tree!!!! It was a eastern white pine and she wanted it. It was all wrong. It must have been 10 feet tall, we would have had to knock a whole in our roof since we have old low ceilings. She didn't care it was too big or cost $100, she just wanted that tree. She said we could put it outside. What???? When we said "No!" with reasons to back our no up, she teared up and cried, over a beloved tree. You would have thought that it was a hurt animal the way she carried on. Bless her little tender heart, we wished we could get it for her. We took her picture in front of the tree so that she could always remember it, I even said that maybe we could find one to plant, she kept crying. We dragged her away and kept looking. We finally found a tree that my husband and I both liked, she wouldn't even consider another. The one we picked was cute and fat! We paid for our new fat tree and went straight home. In the truck she cried, wanting to know why it was so unreasonable to get the tree she wanted-at this point it was the exhaustion of the party and the 3.5 mile bike ride talking, so we just decided to feed her and let the cry fest run it's course.

We got home and put the tree in the stand and filled the base with water and paused to eat dinner. After we ate, we put the Santa Clause movie in and I started to put the lights on the tree. I was trying to lighten the mood and create some Christmas spirit to chase the bah humbugs away. It was working, we were enjoying the movie, we had just named our tree "FAT CHARLEY" when I was reaching for the light socket and Fat Charley fell over. Water went everywhere, I am screaming for help and towels. The Bah Humbugs were jumping up and down, slipping in and mopping up the water, and struggling with Fat Charley to get him out of the base and back in again straight. If ever in the world there was a time to say BAH HUMBUG, it was at that moment. We finally got Fat Charley steady and watered, I sat down and relaxed and watched the movie with Haley before carrying on with the decorating. Towards the end of the movie, Haley and I started once again to decorate our chubby Christmas tree and we enjoyed ourselves. She got a kick out putting the garland around Fat Charley, especially since he didn't fall on top of her. We had no more chaos, only Christmas cheer as we hung our ornaments on the tree. May Fat Charley sing for joy in its purpose of a Christmas tree.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;

Let the sea resound, and all that is in it;

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them,

Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;

They will sing before the LORD, for he comes,

Psalm 96:11-13