Christmas Miracles (21 page)

In 1973, the family had embarked on a new venture to the rocky-mountain-high state of Colorado. An idea they had been working on for a creative “seed ministry” together had been planted and risks were taken to tend to the newly sprouted seeds, but the vision wasn't yet rooted in deep enough to weather the many obstacles and unforeseen storms.

Following a period of separation, it was decided that Sherry and daughter Melissa would remain in Colorado while Paul would eventually accept a call from a small rural church in Ohio. It was Paul's conviction that Erik should be with his father and Melissa with her mother, so after much consideration and debate it was decided how to go about the daunting task of telling the children. They took great care in making certain that both Erik and Melissa knew how much they were both loved by both parents and that this was in no way a result of anything they did, as children so often feel in such situations.

Sherry would decide to relocate to Virginia Beach, Virginia, as it would only be a day's drive back and forth to Ohio, enabling easier and more frequent trips for the kids to stay in close contact. So, Melissa and Mom moved to Virginia Beach, and Erik went with Dad to Ohio.

After only several days, Erik was “acting out” and Paul was calling daily to report problems that Erik was having adjusting to the situation and to seek counsel as to how best to deal with it. Paul thought it best not to let Erik talk to his mom until a little more time passed, in hopes that things might balance out and Erik get more accustomed to a new regiment. But nothing seemed to help and the situation escalated with Erik's distress growing. It was later that month that Erik's mounting trauma would result in hospitalization, where tests would reveal a minor heart problem and stress and anxiety, most likely caused by the separation.

Because of her son's intensely traumatic response to the situation, Sherry cancelled the divorce proceedings on December l. Although her decision to live separate from her husband remained firm, she agreed to travel to Ohio during the Christmas season to reunite the family for the holiday. Paul had come to realize, albeit painfully, that Erik wanted to be with Sherry, but the burden of losing his entire family during the pressures of Christmas, the busiest season of the year for pastors, was more than he felt capable of managing at that time. Sherry and Melissa left their home in Virginia Beach and drove to the parish in Ohio, where they even became somewhat involved in the church functions, as Sherry loved the warm, friendly country spirit of the parishioners.

Sherry later remembered that it was at Erik's school Christmas pageant that she received an almost unbearable glimpse into the future. As she proudly watched her son singing Christmas carols on the auditorium stage, Erik's red hair appeared to have an extra-shiny gleam and the stage lights seemed to capture every freckle on the face that she loved so much. His whole manner seemed to exude an extra-joyful spirit, and he appeared to be ablaze with the excitement of Christmas and the knowledge that his mommy and little sister were back in his life again.

Although Sherry sat with Melissa on her lap in seats that were midway toward the back of the large auditorium, she sensed a strange feeling of oneness with her son. While the class was singing “The Little Drummer Boy,” Erik's favorite Christmas carol, a terrible uneasiness crept up to seize her solar plexus and her throat. The next selection of the children's chorus, “Away in a Manger,” forced her eyes to well up with tears.

As the children sang the words “no crib for his bed,” a surreal scene was frozen in a stopgap of time in Sherry's mind. She will remember it always as if a camera lens had focused in for a close-up, and then captured the image in a freeze-frame. And then a voice from out of nowhere said ever so clearly to Sherry: “This is the last Christmas you'll see your son.”

“It was as though I had been struck a cruel and vicious blow to my stomach,” Sherry said. “The psychic pain was so overwhelming that it was little Melissa who jolted me back into reality.”

Melissa was actually shaking her and asking if she was all right. “Why are you crying, Mommy?” she wanted to know. “Isn't this a happy time?”

Suddenly aware that she was weeping, Sherry wiped her tears away and tried to regain her composure. “Yes, sweetie, yes, it is a time to be happy,” she told Melissa. “I guess Mommy was just crying tears of joy.”

Although the terrifying freeze-frame image of Erik and the awful message still pierced her heart, Sherry saw that Melissa was comforted by her explanation.

The remainder of that evening proceeded as normal— except for the memory of the troubling vision that haunted Sherry and forced her again and again to attempt to understand its exact meaning.

Then came the special midweek children's Christmas service at the church where Paul served as pastor.

“The church was packed,” Sherry recalled. “It was customary for all the children of the congregation to gather at the steps near the altar, while the pastor gave a sermon just for them.”

Children from under two years to ten were all excitedly sitting on the steps, listening to the pastor deliver a Christmas message structured to teach them the true meaning of the holiday. It was baby Jesus' birthday, and the pastor pointed to the manger scene under the decorated tree.

After the brief sermon, Pastor Paul posed a question for the gathered children. “What gift would you give the baby Jesus?” he asked, going on to create a colorful scenario. “Since it is baby Jesus' birthday, let's pretend that you are invited to his birthday party and you can take him any gift you wanted to. What gift would you bring him?”

Pausing to emphasize the seriousness of the query, the pastor said, “I want you to really think about it. Then, when you are ready, I want you to tell everyone here tonight what your gift would be.”

It took only a few seconds for the children, one by one, to seem satisfied that they had selected the perfect gift for the baby Jesus. A little boy offered his toy fire engine. A girl was willing to give up her favorite doll. Another little girl said that she would give baby Jesus her very favorite cuddly teddy bear, the one that went with her everywhere.

Sherry could almost hear the wheels turning in Melissa's head as she thought about her own birthday, which was just days away. Melissa was nearly born on Christmas Day herself. She would be four years old on the day after Christmas, December 26. “I'd give baby Jesus my love,” she said emphatically.

“I was very touched by Melissa's response,” Sherry said, “and I smiled back at those members of the congregation who turned to me with warm smiles, silently bespeaking, ‘Oh, how sweet, how precious.' ”

Then came Erik's turn. “He was not a shy boy,” Sherry said, recalling the scene of that long-ago Christmas service. “Erik had something of an impish element to him. He liked to tease and play. In a situation such as this, he might be embarrassed and say something cute or silly to make people laugh.”

But Sherry noticed how serious Erik was as his father, Pastor Paul, prompted him, “Erik, what would you give baby Jesus?”

Looking directly at the image of the baby Jesus in the manger, Erik turned and spoke boldly and with conviction: “I'd give him my soul!”

“The tears in my eyes welled instantly to overflowing,” Sherry said. “I choked back a gasp as I could not help being reminded of the ‘freeze-frame' incident days earlier and the horrible message that had come with it that this would be the last Christmas that I would see my son. No! rang through my head so loudly that I was certain others could hear it.”

Sherry stated that she has no memory of what took place between Erik's declaring the gift of his very soul to baby Jesus and the final blessing of the pastor at the end of the service.

“I stood there, shaking hands with members of the congregation in an altered state of consciousness,” she said. “I was stuck somewhere among my thoughts and the terrible confusion that I felt.”

So many strange little things occurred in the days that followed. And some of them were harbingers of the awful events that lay ahead.

“Paul took the kids in his van to pick up a baby-sitter and the driver's door kept flying open as he drove down the snow-and-ice packed country road,” Sherry said. “When they returned, Erik came bolting in the front door, laughing and declaring how much fun it had been to be in the van when it spun around and around on the ice. To his child's mind, to spin on the ice wasn't dangerous; it was like an amusement park ride. As he described the door opening and the van spinning in circles on the ice-packed road, I felt my face go white.”

On the next two mornings, totally out of character, Erik arose first and knelt at his mommy's bedside. “Erik was one who didn't like to get up in the morning,” Sherry said, “so I was shocked to see him kneeling there and staring at me. When I asked him if something was wrong, he answered, ‘Nothing's wrong, Mommy. I just love you so very much, that's all.'”

Sherry awakened to see Erik kneeling at her bedside for the third morning in a row. Once again, he assured her that nothing was wrong. She slipped back asleep, but a little while later, Erik once again came back into the room and told her that he had a present for her.

“He took me by the hand and led me into the playroom where he had assembled a puzzle that pictured a single white horse grazing in a beautiful green meadow,” Sherry said. “I hugged him and gave him a kiss, and he solemnly informed me that the puzzle could not be disassembled and put away. It was a present for me.”

With so many other things on her mind, Sherry agreed to Erik's request. It seemed very strange to her that he had taken such great pride in the accomplishment of having pieced this particular puzzle together. From the time he was very small, he had always been the greatest of puzzle solvers and assemblers. This was a very simple fifty-or-so piece puzzle, the kind that he had put together effortlessly when he was three or four years old.

But she had more pressing matters to consider. It was now time to get ready for church on Christmas Sunday—and the weather was formidable. It was sleeting, snowing, and blowing, and extremely cold.

Paul had left for church quite some time earlier, and there had already been three or four phone calls from concerned parishioners warning Sherry not to venture out on such bad roads. Pastor Hansen's house was out in the country, and it was about a twenty-minute drive to church.

“Don't you feel that you have to come out because it's Christmas Sunday or because of Pastor Paul or any other reason,” one earnest lady had told her over the telephone. “The roads are terrible and dangerous. There are warnings for folks to stay inside. All of the other churches in the entire surrounding area are closed. Pastor insists that he will hold services for whoever wants to make it out since he's already there. But we don't want anything to happen to you and the kids. Just stay in and be safe.”

Sherry felt pleased with the sincere expressions of concern, but since she and the kids were all ready, she decided that they might as well go—carefully—to church.

“Not until I was in the garage trying to open the door to my Fiat convertible did I realize how really bad the weather was,” Sherry said. “My car had been in the shop getting a new top, and this was the first time I had gone out to drive since I brought it back from the garage. The doors wouldn't open. They were frozen shut.”

Sherry tried a hammer and boiling water. Nothing would budge those doors.

After about twenty minutes of failed efforts, Erik said, “Good, Mom. Let's just go in and build a fire and you can read us a story.”

That sounded like the perfect plan to Sherry. But Melissa wasn't satisfied with it. “No, let's go to church,” she yelled. “We can take the jeep.”

Sherry walked over to the jeep that had been loaned to Pastor Paul by some parishioners. She said that she had never driven such a vehicle, and she would have no idea where the keys were kept.

“Daddy always leaves the keys in the ignition,” Melissa said.

Sure enough, they were there.

Sherry turned the keys in the ignition but got no response from the engine. After a second and third attempt, she concluded that trying to start the jeep was a waste of time. “Okay, kids,” she said, “let's go into the house and build a fire.”

For some reason, such a pronouncement made Melissa start to cry and insist that she wanted to go to church.

“I suspected that the reason behind Melissa's youthful dedication to church was a normal desire to play with other children her own age in the nursery,” Sherry said, “but I gave the jeep one more try. This time it started.”

As she looked over at her two children, half-crouched and half-standing on the passenger side's bucket seat, for the first time the flimsy structure of the loaned jeep became apparent to her. It was really more or less a customized vehicle that had been hand-built from an army surplus kit. And it didn't even have seatbelts.

“After all the attempts to open my car door and to start the homemade jeep, it occurred to me that we would end up being late for services anyway,” Sherry said, “but I started out very carefully on the hazardous country road. The maximum speed that I would dare drive was about fifteen to twenty-five miles an hour. But I thought that even if we arrived for only the last fifteen minutes of church, at least we would have been there.”

When they were about halfway to the church, the passenger door of the jeep flew open. Since they were traveling at a slow speed, Sherry came to a near stop and Erik pulled the door shut. But it came open again and again.

“That does it,” Sherry exclaimed. “We are definitely not taking this back home.”

When they finally arrived at the church, they went to one of the back pews and quietly sat down. The service had been late to start, granting a little extra time for those who chose to brave the bad weather.