Simon & Schuster had set up a toast to celebrate the success of my book. Not five minutes into the party my publicist walked into the conference room. “I have an announcement,” she shouted above the din. “I just got off the phone withUSA Today. The Christmas Boxjust passed Howard Stern on their list.The Christmas Boxis now the number-one book in America!”
•
A few days later I returned to Salt Lake City for the December 6 angel ceremony. Utah’s KTVX television hadcome down to my office to interview me before the event when they learned that I was waiting for the advance report from theNew York Times.Their camera was on me when I learned that I had hit number one on the list.
37
•
I have learned much about loss from their pain.
Oftentimes it takes the darkness of another’s grief to shed light on our own.
THELOOKINGGLASS
MY LAST BOOK SIGNINGof that remarkable year was at a Wal-Mart in West Valley City, just west of the Salt Lake valley. It was the last Saturday to shop before Christmas. By the time I arrived for the event, many in line had been waiting for more than two hours. I sat down at my table, rubbed my wrist, and began to sign. About a half hour into the signing a woman walked up outside the roped stanchions of the line and just stared at me. Then she shouted at me.
“I don’t have time to wait in your line, Mr. Evans,” she said.
The line quieted and those near the table turned to see who had created the disturbance. As I glanced up I noticed there was something dark and soulful about the woman’s eyes.
“I just wanted you to know that my little girl was killed by a car last Thursday. I have read your book every day since then and it’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.”
I walked around the table and embraced the woman asshe buried her head in my shoulder and wept. A few minutes later I returned to the table. The woman drifted off into the crowd. Those in line stood in stunned silence. After a moment a woman in line said, “I read that this happens at your book signings.”
“Almost every one,” I replied.
38
•
SHORTLY BEFORECHRISTMASour family was in the living room with a photographer fromUSA Today,taking pictures for the cover of the Life section, when the phone rang. It was Mary Kay Lazarus, my local publicist.
“We just received a phone call from the White House,” she said. “You and Keri have been invited to meet the president.”
About a week later Keri and I walked in through the doors of the White House. The White House was beautifully adorned in its Christmas finery and we were taken upstairs to meet with the president’s staff. After signing books, we were asked if we would like to go down and meet the president.
“Just like that?” I said.
The woman smiled. “Why not?”
She went down to check with President Clinton. A moment later she called up to us. “I’m sorry, Jesse Jackson justarrived with his son. They’ll be meeting for a while. But the president has invited you to be his guest in the presidential box tonight at the Kennedy Center. Then he’ll meet with you in the morning after his radio broadcast.”
We went to the Kennedy Center for a presentation of theMessiahand returned to the White House the next day, where we met with President Clinton in the Oval Office. As Keri spoke with President Clinton I could not help but be amused. Mrs. Clinton had just finished her bookIt Takes a Villageand was about to go on book tour, and here was my wife talking with the president of the United States about what it was like to be married to an author.
That night, at a White House reception, Keri and I danced in the East Room to music played by the marine band.
“Can you believe this?” I asked Keri. “We’re dancing in the White House.”
•
Since that time Keri and I have met actors, directors, authors, diplomats, political leaders, renowned journalists, religious leaders, athletes and sports legends, billionaires and business magnates.We have eaten lunch at the home of President George and Mrs. Barbara Bush. I have shared the podium withPresident George W. Bush and first lady Mrs. Laura Bush. I have visited with former British prime minister John Major and eaten breakfast with Elizabeth Dole.
My grandfather’s words have come true. I have indeed walked with the royalty of this earth.
I have since considered that there might be another meaning to the words of the blessing. Perhaps what was meant in my grandfather’s blessing by “royalty” was not, as I had always assumed, the powerful and famous of this world after all, but instead, the ordinary good people of this world who had endured the refiner’s fire of loss and emerged as royal spirits.
Perhaps. I’d like to think so.
39
•
No little girl could stop the world to wait for me.
NATALIEMERCHANT,FROM THE SONG
“ MYHOWYOU’VEGROWN”
AREPORTER ASKED MEwhy I had chosen a line from a Natalie Merchant song to use as an epigraph inThe Christmas Box.
As appropriate as the words are to the book, I had an even more personal reason for its inclusion. One night I was playing with my daughters, Jenna and Allyson, when the song “My How You’ve Grown” came on the stereo. My daughters spontaneously began to dance, flinging their skinny little bodies about the room in rapturous motion. For the moment I was lost in the joy of that motion. As I listened to the words of the song, about the fleeting nature of childhood, and watched my little girls, I began to feel a little sentimental.
Allyson, who was only four at the time, suddenly asked, “Dad, what’s wrong? There’s water in your eyes.”
I assured her that nothing was wrong, but she didn’t believe me. She came over and sat in my lap. There was, after all,water in my eyes.I told her that listening to the song made me think about them growing up.
“Don’t you want us to grow up?” she asked.
“That’s a hard question,” I said. I told her that I wanted her to grow up and have all the experiences life held for her. But I never wanted her to go away. And I never wanted this moment to end. She thought about it for a moment, then, with the music still playing in the background, she said, “Dad, then let’s dance.”
She got it right,I thought. Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?
Dear Richard,
Though I am only ten years old this story touched me deeply. Now I know a mother’s feelings when she says I love you. I have also learned why parents are so heartbroken when one of their children dies. Again, you touched me deeply.
Love,
Chelsea
P.S. I hope your family is touched too.
Epilogue
•
From our first infant babbling to our last word we make but one statement, and that is our life.
THELETTER
SINCETHECHRISTMASBOX’S humble first printing of twenty copies, more than 7 million copies of the book have been sold throughout the world. Stacked atop one another they would roughly be the height of 258 Empire State Buildings. Or about ten times higher than Mount Everest. And the book continues to sell.
More important, the healing of the book continues. Last year at an event in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a woman with no more information than that I was somewhere in the city had driven nearly two hours from another state to find me. She wanted to tell me howThe Christmas Boxhad saved her daughter’s life.
The woman told me that her daughter had fallen in with the wrong crowd, spiraling off into a lifestyle that includedsex, abuse and depression. Her daughter developed an eating disorder and had starved her five-foot-five frame down to eighty-two pounds. In her daughter’s own wor
ds, it was her way of committing suicide “without taking responsibility for a messy death.”
The doctor warned the woman that her beautiful daughter was dying and as the girl resisted all help, there was little they could do but prepare for it. Then, one evening shortly before Christmas, the mother took her daughter shopping just to get her out of the house. While wandering through the store her daughter suddenly noticed a small book. She walked over and examined it. It wasThe Christmas Box.As she read its flap, she felt a powerful in-explainable urge to read the book.
Her mother bought it for her and that night she read the book from cover to cover. In a letter to me, the daughter described the experience asa stream of light entering a darkened room.For the first time in years she felt hope.
The young woman called her mother and told her how she felt about the book and asked if I had written anything else. Surprised by her daughter’s sudden interest in reading, let alone anything, she went out and bought everything I had written. Her daughter said that through the process of reading the books she came to believe that God loves his children no matter how ugly the sin.
Since then she not only has recovered from her eating disorder but is now lecturing to other girls about the dangersof bulimia and anorexia. She has been a newscaster for a Christian radio station and a cheerleader for a national sports team.
The healing of the angel continues. In 1996 Utah’s governor, Mike Leavitt, proclaimed December 6 Christmas Box Angel Day in Utah—a day of healing and remembrance for those who have lost children.
The angel statue is adorned, year-round, with flowers, candles, stuffed animals and notes to loved ones. I’m told that now and then tour buses wind their way through the cemetery.
Like the book, the angel itself is spreading throughout the world, as there are many who desire Christmas Box Angel statues for their own communities. The first request came from Elko, Nevada. Not long after, I received a call from the Oklahoma branch of the American Red Cross. They wanted an angel for the survivors of the Murrah Federal Building bombing. The angel currently resides in the museum across from the national memorial.
Reader’s Digestchose the Christmas Box Angel as the cover story of their first edition of the century (“He Made Hope a Bestseller,” January 2000). Millions of people around the world have read about the angel and the requests for angels come even faster now. As I write this, there are twenty-three angels and more than eighty more in the works. (For a complete listing of standing angels see the end of this book.)
The three Christmas Box House facilities that sprang from the book have already housed thousands of children. We achieved every benefit from the facility we hoped for—and many we hadn’t anticipated. For the first time, large groups of siblings were kept together. Community donations to child advocacy increased 7,000 percent the first two months the Salt Lake shelter was open, and the average hours of schooling for a child in state custody rose from just two hours a week to thirty.
And we’ve just begun. Government leaders and child advocates from across America and around the world have toured our facility, and we are currently preparing to bring Christmas Box Houses to other states and countries. The Christmas Box House staff has addressed child advocacy world conferences in Budapest and Slovakia. Our organization was invited by the deputy minister of social services to consult with the People’s Republic of China on child welfare practices. The day will come when hundreds of thousands of children will be served by Christmas Box House facilities and advocates.
Engaged as an advocate for abused children, I often see the worst of humanity. There is much evil in this world. History abounds in it. So does today’s news. Still, through my journey and experiences I have become more hopeful of this world, not less. There is still more love than hate. We need to remember this.
There are those who will say that much of what I havewritten about is no more than coincidence. Perhaps. Then again, perhaps coincidence is just God choosing to remain anonymous. I believe God’s fingerprints are to be found all over the events of our lives. Decide for yourself. But if there is, in fact, a divine plan to make more of our lives, this is good news indeed.
The Bible says that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” There could be no better explanation of the Christmas Box Miracle than this; through a small Christmas story, thousands, maybe millions of lives are somehow affected for the better. And if I cannot fully explain these miracles, it is of small concern to me. I’m satisfied just to be a part of it—a journey where the end, perhaps, was known from the beginning. The words of my grandfather’s blessing have come to pass. But in the blessing there is also this warning and reminder:The greatest work you will ever do will be as a father in your own home.
When I step far enough from the trees to consider the forest, I wonder at the scope of the miracles wrought by this little book and I cannot help but marvel at my role in it and wonder,Why me?There are better writers and better people. Maybe I was just the only one listening when the story needed to be told. I intend to ask God, if I ever get the chance.
Current Christmas Box Angel
Memorial Statues
•
Salt Lake City, UT
Elko, NV
Pueblo, CO
St. Louis, MO
Evansville, IN
Bedford, TX
West Palm Beach, FL
Spanish Fork, UT
Oklahoma City, OK
Belleville, IL
Cheyenne, WY
Grand Forks, ND
Marco Island, FL
Wauconda, IL
Fayetteville, NC
San Jose, CA
Loveland, CO
Ogden, UT
FL Flat Rock, MI
Maple Grove, MN
Stow, OH
Rutland, VT
Westhampton, MAThis list changes frequently. For an updated list of angel statues and for information about the location of an angel in your area, please visit the Richard Paul Evans Web site at:
www.richardpaulevans.com
or call (801) 532-6267.
A Gift for My Readers
•
Over the years, I have received many requests for a compilation of material from my works—quotations, diary entries and thoughts from the characters who populate my novels. I have used many of those entries throughout this book.
I am pleased to now make available
THE QUOTABLE EVANS:
Diary Entries, Letters and Lessons from the Novels of
Richard Paul Evans
To order a free copy, please visit our Web site at:
www.richardpaulevans.com
or send your name and mailing address to:
Richard Paul Evans
P.O. Box 1416
Salt Lake City, UT 84110
Copies will be available as long as supplies last. There is no charge for the booklet or the shipping and handling.
Thank you for your continued interest and support.
About the Author
•
Richard Paul Evans is the bestselling author ofThe Christmas Boxtrilogy andThe Lockettrilogy, as well as the children’s booksThe Dance; The Christmas Candle,which received the 1998 American Mothers’ Book Award;The Spyglass,which received the Storytelling World Award; andThe Tower.There are currently more than eleven million copies of his books in print. All proceeds from Evans’s books for children go to the Christmas Box House International, an organization that he founded, dedicated to building shelters and providing services for abused children. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children. He is currently working on his next book.
Please send correspondence to Richard Paul Evans at:
P.O. Box 1416
Salt Lake City, UT 84110
or visit his Web site at:
www.richardpaulevans.com
Richard Paul
Evans is a nationally acclaimed speaker. To request Mr. Evans for speaking engagements, please fax your request to (801) 532-6358 or contact the above address or Web site.
The Christmas Box Miracle Page 12