A Treasury of Christmas Miracles (8 page)

Noel’s face lit up as Susie had never seen it do before. “She’s my kitten, Mommy!” she signed.

They all smiled and Evan paid Mary for the kitten. As he did, she explained how the other kittens would run and hide when
she ran the vacuum, but the white kitten seemed unaffected by the noise. Evan and Susie exchanged a knowing glance, remembering
the days when they were trying to figure out what was wrong with Noel.

“Eventually I had the kitten checked by a veterinarian, and she told us the poor little thing was deaf,” Mary told them.

Susie petted the kitten and then got Noel’s attention. Her hands moving, she said, “See, Noel. She’s perfect and beautiful
and special, just like the other kittens. The only difference is she can’t hear.”

Noel smiled, snuggling her face up close to the kitten’s. Then she looked at her mother and with her free hand said, “Let’s
take her home, Mommy.”

Over the next few weeks there was no separating Noel and her tiny deaf kitten. Every afternoon she would set the kitten in
front of her on her bed and use sign language to talk to her. One day Susie watched, trying to understand what Noel was telling
the kitten.

“It’s okay, Kitty,” Noel said, her little hands moving slowly so her kitten could understand. “You don’t have to be afraid
or lonely anymore because now there’s two deaf people in our family. You’re the best Christmas present ever. We’ll be best
friends for always.”

Susie walked into the room slowly and sat down next to Noel.

“You love her, don’t you, Noel?” she signed to her daughter.

“Yes, Mommy. She and I are both special because we’re both deaf.” Noel looked at her kitten, whose soft white face was tilted
curiously as she watched Noel’s fingers move. Noel looked back at her mother. “She doesn’t understand sign language yet, but
when she gets older she will. And then it will be easier for her to talk to me.”

Noel reached for the kitten and held her close. “Thank you for praying, Mommy. God heard your prayers,” she signed. “He gave
me a friend who was born deaf just like me. And at Christmastime, too!”

“Yes, Noel.” Susie smiled. “I was just thinking that. God definitely heard our prayers. Your kitty is the best Christmas present
of all.”

C
ara Wilcox was anxious to get out of the house for a while. It was December 12— the first day of Christmas—and already the
air was freezing cold outside. Life had been difficult for the Wilcox family lately and Cara had no idea how she’d afford
Christmas. Times like that cool winter night, Cara knew the only way to get her mind off her worries was to get outside—even
in their crowded neighborhood—and get some fresh air.

“Who wants to take a walk?” she asked as she climbed into her coat. It was very dark outside, and Cara’s secure. And that
evening she planned to walk no more than once around the block.

Cara looked into the faces of her four children and saw that none of the older three was excited about the idea of a walk.
Sarah, five, and Joey, seven, shook their heads.

“We want to watch TV, Mom,” they said.

Cara looked at her oldest son, Colin, fifteen, and the boy shrugged. “Not tonight, Mom. Okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “But you watch Joey and Sarah, all right? I’ll take Laura.”

Her three-year-old daughter had a lot of energy, and Cara found her riding toy. Even though it was cold, the child could ride
alongside her for one block without it bothering her. It would be good for both of them. She took the child’s hand and together
they left the apartment.

Once outside Cara and Laura had not traveled far when the child no longer wanted her riding toy. Cara sighed and picked up
the toy. As she did, she glanced behind her. She was only about half a block from home, and suddenly she saw Joey and Sarah
walking up the street. They were acting sneaky, darting in and out of the shadows as if they were trying to catch up to their
mother and surprise her, so Cara decided to play along.

Turning back toward the direction she’d been walking in, she and Laura continued down the street. When they reached the intersection,
Cara turned around and looked for them again. This time she didn’t see them.

“Hmm,” she said out loud, and Laura looked up at her.

“C’mon, Mommy,” the child said. “Walk.”

Cara stood unmoving, staring back toward her house and straining to see the children. She wondered if perhaps they had gotten
scared of the dark and decided to go back home. Then the thought occurred to her that perhaps someone had snatched them. The
neighborhood was often a frightening place, and crimes were committed around them each day. Suddenly Cara began to panic.

“Sarah!” she called out. “Joey!”

There was no response and Cara could feel herself actually shaking in fear. Quickly she turned around, tightened her grip
on Laura’s hand, and began heading back toward the apartment.

As they walked, Cara noticed a man across the street who was headed in the same direction. Cara wondered where he had come
from, since the few times she had looked back to check her children she hadn’t noticed him. Although she was preoccupied with
finding Joey and Sarah, Cara noticed that the man across the street kept looking at them. Since she did not recognize him
as someone who lived in the neighborhood, Cara began to be suspicious of the man and picked up her pace, sweeping Laura into
her arms. In one hand she held the riding toy and decided she would use it in self-defense if necessary.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Laura asked, aware of her mother’s nervousness.

“Nothing, honey. We’re going home now.”

As Cara and her daughter neared the corner of her apartment building, the man began crossing the street at an angle headed
in their direction. Terror raced through Cara’s body, and she wondered if she could reach her apartment in time if he tried
to accost them.

At that instant a thought came to Cara.

Pretend you see your father at the front door and talk to him,
a voice seemed to say.

Instantly Cara acted on the suggestion.

“Hi, Dad!” she yelled, waving in the direction of her apartment, still four units away. “Have you seen the kids?”

Almost at once the man who had been headed straight for her turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. Cara
breathed a sigh of relief. She had tricked him into thinking that her father was really at the door.

Cara ran up her apartment steps and dashed inside. Her fears alleviated, Cara saw Joey and Sarah on the floor watching television
as they had been when she left.

“Why’d you guys come back home?” she asked. “Did something scare you? What?”

The children looked blankly at their mother and then at each other. “What do you mean?” Joey asked.

“You were outside, following me. I saw you. Why’d you come back inside?”

Colin looked at his mother then and shook his head.

“Mom, they’ve been right here the whole time,” he said simply. “They didn’t want to go, remember?”

“That’s impossible,” she said, moving slowly toward the chair. “I saw you both. Following behind us, and when I couldn’t see
you anymore, I turned around.”

Then Cara remembered the strange man. For the next thirty minutes she tried to explain to Colin about the man and how threatened
she had felt.

“Mom, maybe the kids you saw were angels and the only way they knew to get you to come back home was to make themselves look
like Joey and Sarah. You know, Christmas angels.”

Cara stared at her son. She had been thinking the same thing, but was afraid she’d sound crazy. But why not? Wouldn’t it have
been fitting for God to use angels who looked like her kids? Her precious children.

“I don’t know, son. But I’m sure I saw the kids outside tonight.”

Cara told everyone who would listen about the story of what happened on her walk, but it wasn’t until later that she came
to believe without a doubt that a miracle had occurred that night. It turned out that the man who had been trailing her was
an escaped felon from the state prison. Until his recapture, he carried a gun, robbing people in Cara’s neighborhood at gunpoint.

“I believe he intended to rob me, and then kill me and Laura,” Cara told her friend later. “And by some Christmas miracle,
God directed two children who looked just like mine to lead me back to safety while my children were inside the apartment
the whole time. It must be a miracle because things like that don’t just happen.”

S
cott and Julianne were sixteen when they met while attending high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That day the blonde, blue-eyed
teenager was running late for class. When she walked into Scott’s homeroom he pretended to faint and fell off his chair onto
the floor.

If Scott’s introductory act did not win Julie’s heart, it definitely caught her attention. For the next few years until graduation
the two were an item, attending dances together and building a very special kind of friendship.

“One day you’ll be wearing my ring, Julie,” Scott would tell her. “And then you’ll be mine forever.”

Julianne would laugh the way only a teenage girl can and bow her head bashfully. “Oh, Scott! That’s such a long way off.”

But after high school Scott began commuting by bus to a job at a meatpacking plant some distance from his home and the couple
lost track of each other. For two years they neither saw nor heard from each other.

Then, shortly after her twentieth birthday, Julianne was tidying her parents’ house when the phone rang.

“I still say you’ll wear my ring one day, Julie,” the caller said.

“Scott Tschirgi!” She could hardly believe he had called after such a long time. “I thought you forgot about me.”

Scott began his courtship by passing by Julie’s house each night and serenading her with his harmonica. Julie was thrilled
with his renewed interest and almost overnight the relationship between them grew until they knew they could never be apart.
A year later, on February 24, Scott made good on his promise and placed a small gold band on Julie’s hand in a wedding ceremony
attended by dozens of friends and family.

“This isn’t the ring I want you to wear,” Scott told Julie shortly before the wedding date. “But it will have to do until
I can afford to buy you the one you’ll wear forever.”

Two years later, Julie’s mother and her best friend died in a single-car accident. After the funeral, Julie’s father tearfully
approached Julie and Scott. In his hand was the wedding ring worn by Julie’s mother for three decades. “She told me once if
anything ever happened to her she wanted you to have it.”

Julie took the ring and knew it would always be one of her most prized possessions. A piece of the mother she’d loved and
lost.

Later that year, a week before Christmas, Julie and Scott went to a jewelry store in downtown Ann Arbor and had the precious
ring engraved. Julie would wear it in place of the smaller ring Scott had bought for their wedding.

“It’s the perfect symbol of love,” Scott told her as they watched the ring being engraved. “Her love to you, and our love
to each other.”

The white-gold wedding band was nearly half an inch wide and the jeweler was able to engrave it with their initials and wedding
date; the inside of the ring read: JAT-SMT-2-24-68.

“Now and forever this ring will be a reminder to you that I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you, Julie,” Scott told
her as he placed it on her finger that afternoon. “And I’ll love you till the day I die.”

The marriage between Scott and Julie Tschirgi was everything they dreamed it would be. Two years later their son, Mike, was
born followed by a daughter, Dena, and after that another daughter, Tara. The family was close-knit, spending weekends and
afternoons camping and fishing the lakes in their area.

Then, one summer, the Tschirgi family went fishing at Half Moon Lake, less than an hour from Ann Arbor. It was a remote lake
with a circumference of several miles, and it was a Tschirgi family favorite. The lake was surrounded by a wide rim of rocks
that made fishing tricky. Fishermen had to maneuver their way along fifty yards of slippery boulders before reaching the water
and casting their lines. But Scott and Julie believed the rocks kept the lake less populated and resulted in a greater catch
each time they went. That fall was no exception, and as the day progressed the Tschirgis began reeling in one succulent catfish
after another.

By then Mike was twelve and Tara, the youngest, was seven, and everyone in the family knew how to have fun on a fishing trip.
Julie set up a fishing line for the children and helped them catch crawdads from between the rocks.

Finally the sun began to set, and the Tschirgis stopped fishing so they could eat, bundling into warmer clothes because of
a chill in the fall air. When the meal was finished, no one wanted to go home; since the fish were biting so well, Scott and
Julie agreed to stay longer for some night fishing. They retrieved their lantern from the car and fished until nearly midnight.

Giddy from the long day and the excitement of catching so many catfish and crawdads, the weary Tschirgi family made its way
across the rocks toward their car. By then the temperature had dropped even further, and Scott flipped on the car’s heater
so they could all have a chance to warm up.

Forty minutes later, when they were nearly home, Julianne suddenly gasped out loud.

“My wedding ring!” she cried. “It’s gone!”

Scott glanced across the car at his wife’s hand and saw that she was right. Where the ring had been on her finger was now
bare.

“We have to go back. I need that ring.”

Scott sighed sadly. “It’s after one in the morning. The kids are beat and we have to get to bed. I can’t go all the way back
there tonight.”

“Oh, no! I can’t believe I lost it. My hand must have gotten cold, and somehow the ring must have fallen off when I was casting
out.”