Two Scraped Fingers

In an old Christmas song from the 1940s, a child sings, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.” I’m suggesting a new version of that song this year for our family: “What I got for Christmas is two scraped fingers.” In fact, the two scraped fingers that we got this week as an early Christmas gift on Monday will probably be my favorite gift of all. Let me explain . . .


Monday morning, Katie was driving to her job at the Cornerstone University library and stopped for a yellow light at East Beltline and Lake (for those of you who are local). Unfortunately, the construction-company truck with a trailer that was behind her didn’t stop for the yellow light, and hit the back of her car (which is actually my car), spun her, and hit the driver’s side door, denting it so badly that she couldn’t open it to get out of the car. The back of the car was smashed in, the back window was shattered, the driver’s side was dented, and both the driver’s side windows were shattered. Katie walked away from the whole thing with two scraped fingers that didn’t even require bandages. And in the meantime, until Henry could get there, there were several people who showed great kindness to her, especially a woman who stayed at the scene, let Katie sit in her car, and called her boss for her to let him know what happened and why Katie wasn’t there.

In our family, December has historically been an eventful month. We have many birthdays, including my dad’s, my sister’s, my niece’s, and Henry’s—and those are just a few; there are more on both my and Henry’s side . It has also been a month of some devastating events: the car accident that ultimately took my sister’s life; my first husband’s leukemia diagnosis; the diagnosis about a year later that he had relapsed after his bone marrow transplant and the prognosis that he would die in about ten weeks.

But now I will also remember December as the month when my red-headed girl got into a terrible accident and walked away with two scraped fingers. And I will thank God that He gave us this gift of the protection of Katie’s life. I don’t think there’s much else I could want for Christmas this year.

*The photo is Katie and Jonathan, probably about 1994, my treasures of Christmas past.