Ben took over. “Queen is being humble, but, friends, she was born with congenital heart disease. She’s been on the transplant list for some time, too long, and is anxiously awaiting a new heart. I’ve never met a stronger little girl in my entire life.”
You have no idea, Al thought.
Queen jumped into the empty, awkward moment they’d created for her. “This is our Christmas Jar,” she said again and held it up; the camera zoomed in. “We tried to give it to Al, but like I said, he thinks other people needed it more. So we tried to give it to him again, and he put it back on our front porch. My mom even made him brownies—”
The adults laughed again, except for Hope, who was wishing she’d thought to bring Kleenex onstage.
“He kept giving it back. It made me sad. We liked all the jars the nice people gave us, but we want to give one away, too.”
Queen’s mother slid off her stool and stood next to her daughter, who continued the story. “My friend Al made me a promise that if I didn’t go anywhere, he would accept my jar when he got home to Idaho Falls.”
“Where did he go?” Ben asked eagerly.
Queen looked at Hope.
Tears began to fall from Hope’s eyes and her once magazine-perfect mascara bled.
Ben filled the dead air. “If your friend won’t take the jar, maybe Hope would take it home and add it to her project? You could give it to her right now, and ask all the moms and dads watching right now to also help Hope meet her goal. What do you think?”
Queen looked at Hope, then her mother, then the camera. “No.” She wiggled her fingers, motioning for Hope to lean in. “Will you take it to him?”
“Of course,” Hope said in a choked whisper.
“Will you give him a super-important message?”
Hope nodded, not because she wanted to, but because she couldn’t speak.
“Will you tell him I don’t care about a million bazillion jars? I only care about one. This one.” She handed the heavy jar to Hope.
Hope nodded again. Tears flowed as freely from Hope’s eyes as they had the night she watched her mother Louise die in her arms.
Hope leaned in again, this time to kiss Queen on the cheek. Before pulling away, she whispered something only Queen heard: “One jar. One birth. One Savior.”
Queen winked.
Hope’s trip home was a blur of airport security, shouts of congratulations from complete strangers, and an emotional phone call with Marianne.
Despite the rush, the journey back to Chuck’s provided ample time for Hope to relive the night she received her first jar and the despair she felt at seeing her apartment broken into and her life scrambled into pieces. The memory became warmer as she recalled the day she discovered jar recipients Kimberly Telford, John Willard, and A.J. Francis, each of whom had written thank-you letters in the newspaper to their anonymous angels.
High above the eastern seaboard, with her head resting against the cool airplane window, she looked down and pictured the morning she first met Shane Oaks, the sweet and weary single father who’d given her the final piece of the puzzle that had led her to the Maxwells at 316 Oakliegh Hill. She recalled how badly he’d not wanted to spoil the magic of anonymity.
Then Hope wondered, as she had countless times before, whether Adam would have approved of her article in the paper that launched the life she now led.
It was still dark but nearing dawn by the time she walked in the front door at Chuck’s. Despite her careful planning and calculations that she’d be home in time to help deliver the jars, time and the distance to New York had not cooperated. There wasn’t a single jar in sight. The army of volunteers were already in their cars and vans, circling town and delivering jars to widows, the homeless, and the unemployed, to churches, to homes for troubled boys, and to any other random recipients who might be in need. Even the Cluck Truck was gone, no doubt filled with jars destined for homes that would never be the same again.
Hope’s eyes instinctively went to the wall that had proudly held the Board for so long. Her stomach flipped and she shut her eyes tight, afraid to look. It has lied to me for weeks, she thought. No, maybe I lied to it.
She turned away and opened her eyes. The Board had been the one thing that drove her above all else. In the holiday’s faithful moments that lifted and held her above the loneliness, the Board had been a friend and partner.
Now she didn’t care how big the number was.
A noise in the kitchen startled her. But as she walked toward the swinging door, a voice from behind stopped her.
“It’s just Randall back there,” the voice said.
Hope turned to see Al sitting alone with a basket of tater tots and a tic-tac-toe board.
“Sit with me,” he said.
Hope did, and the blurry cloud of her harried Christmas Eve vanished before her faster than a late-March snowfall.
Al replayed his side of their day. The pride he and the rest of her Christmas Jars family felt while watching the interview. The tears they shed. His regret at refusing Queen’s gift not once, not twice, but three times.
Hope stopped him and pulled a jar from her carry-on bag. She slid it across the table. “Queen said it’s not about a bazillion jars. It’s only about one. This one.”
Al pulled the jar close to his chest. He leaned down and kissed the lid. “You don’t know me, Hope, but I’ve been a real heel most of my life. I’ve never cared for anyone very well but myself. And I’m ashamed of this more than anything—but I’ve always doubted God could ever love a man like me.”
“Al—” Hope reached across the table for his hand.
“Wait. This is important.” He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “I’ve been a bad boyfriend, a bad brother, and an especially bad husband.”
Randall began to push through the swinging door, but when he saw the scene unfolding, he quickly turned around.
Al waited for the swinging door to swivel to a stop. “Some lessons take a long time to learn, Hope. I figure that’s OK sometimes, so long as we know that while we’re being too stubborn to learn the lesson life’s trying so hard to teach us, some opportunities might come and go. It’s wonderful, a miracle really, when we finally do learn those tough lessons. But it’s a mixed bag, isn’t it? Because sometimes it’s a tragedy when we finally realize what came and went while we kept our eyes and heart shut.”
Hope sat a little straighter.
“Love isn’t perfect, Hope. All those people who say true love is effortless are selling snake oil. And my goodness, anyone who tells you that true love means never having to say you’re sorry wouldn’t know true love if it hit ’em with a baseball bat.”
Hope chuckled.
“Lasting love—the kind that starts with flutters in your stomach and leads you fifty years later to a wooden rocking chair, drinking lemonade on a porch together—well, that takes real work. And a whole lot of forgiveness.”
He pushed the tater tots aside and took Hope’s hands in his. “And now I figure I finally know what brought me here, the real reason I came. To look you in the eyes and say . . . I’m sorry for not accepting Queen’s jar. And I’m sorry for trying to make this, this tiny miracle, more than it should have been. A thousand jars, a million jars—Queen’s right. It’s about the single jar we give and the single jar we accept.”
Hope nodded and a truck pulled into the parking lot and shined its headlights on the diner’s front window. Hope hadn’t yet looked to see who was behind the wheel, but she prayed it was a newly retired semipro baseball player.
~~~
Why me? I couldn't believe someone would want to help me with a Christmas Jar. I knew at that moment my life had changed. I wanted to use the Christmas Jar tradition to help touch many more lives in the future. This is a miracle that will live on long after I am gone.
—Cameron
Twenty-Five
~~~
December 25th
Al and Hope looked out into the parking lot as the sky started to break
and light bravely began filling the air around them.
There sat Clark, perched in the front seat of the Cluck Truck.
Al hugged Hope and said good-bye before she had a chance to convince him otherwise. As he swung smoothly on his crutches toward the front door, he called back to her, “One more thing. Hope, will you thank Lauren for me?”
“For what?”
“Good advice,” Al answered and marched out to the driver’s side of the Cluck Truck.
Clark stepped out, stretched in the crisp morning air, and shook Al’s hand firmly.
“Do you think I could borrow this?” Al asked. “I promise I’ll bring it back.”
Clark’s smile was the only answer Al needed.
Clark helped him into the truck, loaded his crutches and Christmas Jar on the other side, and waved good-bye. Al rolled out of the parking lot, but before the truck disappeared entirely, Clark heard the distinctive sound of the only horn ever manufactured that went “buck buck.”
Al swung by his hotel to grab what little mattered, and drove out of town on a trail for the cold, windy town he couldn’t wait to see again: home.
Outside Chuck’s diner, Clark turned toward the front window and saw Hope sitting in the booth that knew her best.
Clark slid into the opposite side of the booth and set an empty jar between them.
“Hello there,” Clark said, but Hope’s eyes were locked on the tabletop. “Hope—”
“Please don’t.” Hope finally looked up. “I’m embarrassed.” She looked down again. “And ashamed.”
“Don’t be. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Hope finally made eye contact. “For what?”
“For judging. For pretending to know more than I possibly could have.” He opened his hands on the table and motioned for her to place hers in his.
She did. “I’m sorry too. I’ve been a terrible steward of Adam’s tradition. I lost sight of what mattered and I’m afraid I let him down.” She pointed heavenward. “And Him, too.”
“Not at all,” Clark said. “I am proud to report that I have discovered the origin of the Christmas Jar. It was a miracle, nothing less, performed by a child, and today made available to all.”
Hope gasped. “You read it?”
“Of course.”
She squeezed Clark’s hands with hers.
“And you were right. I’ve never given a jar away.” Clark put a finger to her lips to preempt a debate.
Hope smiled.
“But look at me now. Here I am. Sitting before you with a jar. It’s not much, but it’s my entire offering.”
Hope looked down. “It’s empty.”
“I know. I want to fill it with you.”
Hope pulled her hands away and wiped her eyes.
“And you’re wrong about one thing.” Clark said. “It’s not empty.”
Hope giggled through a burst of tears and lifted the jar to turn it over. Something fell out and tinged across the table, tumbling to a stop in front of her.
She picked up a bubblegum-machine ring with a tiny plastic chicken where the diamond should be.
She put it on and wiped her eyes again.
“Hope Jensen, will you be engaged to consider being properly engaged to me at a later date?“
She laughed. “Yes now. Yes then. Yes whenever.”
Clark leaned over to the midpoint of the table and waited for her to meet him.
She did, and as their lips edged closer, Clark said, “What better place for our first kiss than the altar of Chuck’s.”
After a long first kiss as a couple engaged-to-be-engaged, Clark whispered, “Have you seen the number yet?”
Hope shut her eyes and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
But Clark placed his index finger on her chin and tenderly swiveled her head toward the Board. “Yes, it does.”
Her eyes were filling with tears by the time she processed the number so carefully drawn in red marker and circled in green.
One.
Epilogue
~~~
It was after 6:00 pm before she finally woke up. The sun had not yet set and the room was bathed in the soft, recovering light of early spring.
They’d been watching her sleep peacefully for hours. Anxious for her eyes to open. Anxious for a future.
She had visitors on either side of her bed.
One held her hand and prayed quietly. She wore jeans and the same blouse she’d been in for two days.
The other held his own hands, wringing them tightly and looking back and forth between her face and the monitors. He wore slacks and a tan polo with a logo embroidered on the breast pocket that said “Laura’s Brownies.”
She turned her head to the side and tried to process the faces and the thankful smiles. But before recognizing any of the curious eyes, she noticed something quite familiar and very comforting. Jars, hundreds of jars, sitting humbly like flower arrangements and filling nearly every pocket of space in the otherwise drab hospital room.
But only one jar came into focus. Sitting on a thin table next to her bed she saw a Christmas Jar she knew very well, filled to the brim with coins she’d once put there herself.
An unshaven face slowly appeared in view. “Hello there, Queen.”
~~~
The Daily Record
“Hopeful Words”
by Hope Jensen
(June 24)—We’re officially halfway to another Christmas!
For most of you, there is probably relief that the busy days and over-scheduled nights are still five months away. The Christmas shopping, holiday baking, more shopping, gift-wrapping, office parties, and even more last-minute shopping are today hidden at the back of your life’s closet.
For me, the “Christmas Jar Lady” as some of you now address me in your e-mails and letters, you know I can’t wait to get back to December. This year there are things I want to do better.
As my regular readers know, it was an eventful year for this columnist and her friends at her home-away-from-home, Chuck’s Chicken ’n’ Biscuits on U.S. Highway 4. I’ve written many times of the Christmas Jar tradition, but last year it reached new heights, touched more lives than ever before, and taught me yet another valuable and humbling lesson.
If you know me well, you know humility and I have never been much more than casual acquaintances. I’ve worked hard, been rewarded for my efforts, and grown rather fond of my abilities and talents in recent years. Call it human nature, call it the Natural Man Syndrome, call it Hope being Hope. Take your pick.
For a woman born in the most humble circumstances and raised by humility’s best friend and constant companion, Louise Jensen, my pride is near unforgivable. I cringe when I imagine what my mother would think of the hubris I’ve displayed in the past. If it is true that our departed loved ones watch down on us, then I am certain my mother’s back was turned through much of last year’s holiday season.
Looking back with the perfect vision of uh-oh hindsight, my lofty goals and bold ambitions for growing the Christmas Jars tradition weren’t the problem. I was. The flaw—my flaw—was that for a brief period I sought to assume ownership of something that’s never belonged to me. As I’ve said in your churches, schools, and community gatherings, the tradition belongs to every one of you who has ever given or received a Christmas Jar.
The miracle of the Christmas Jar has never been about numbers, grand totals, or breaking records. It has always been about a single jar given in a single moment of selfless sacrifice. Is there power in the cumulative effect of our jars? Of course, and I hope that our churches, schools, and communities will continue raising money together. But in that magic moment of delivery, when the needy recipient is overcome with gratitude and love for someone unseen, they don’t think of 1,001 lives changed by the power of a jar. They think of one. Just one.
The irony of last year comes in remembering how the Christmas Jar tradition began. Years ago it was a little girl with a pure heart attempting to
give a jar to a reluctant recipient. Now almost three decades later it was another little girl with a pure, but dying, heart attempting to give a jar to a reluctant recipient.
It wasn’t easy, but both recipients accepted the jars meant for them and them alone, and their lives were never the same. One, a lovely and brave woman, gave her unborn daughter a better chance at life. And the other, forever a changed man, found another chance at love with a Queen and her mother.
In the past six months, many hearts have changed. And most miraculously, just a few days ago, one was replaced completely.
As for my heart, it is finally whole. The man with a blind spot for curveballs finally hit one out of the park, and I will be married to a man with the best hands in the furniture restoration business on July 4th. The ceremony is private, but you, dear readers, are cordially invited to the reception. 5:00 p.m. Where else?
Chuck’s Chicken ’n’ Biscuits.
Discussion Questions
~~~
1. Hope’s goal is an ambitious 1,001 Christmas Jars. What are some of your life-changing goals? Is it always a good thing to reach for the impossible?
2. Chuck’s will contained some unusual requirements, including “Keep living.” What unusual or personal requests would you make of your family and friends?
3. Both Gayle and Lauren are widows. How do they approach and handle widowhood? Does one woman handle it better than the other? What advice would you give Gayle?
4. Al feels almost compelled to travel to Chuck’s Chicken ‘n’ Biscuits in search of something new and good in his life. Have you ever felt that drive to change something in your life? Did you follow that inner voice? Was the change a good thing?
5. Marianne and Nick are able to enjoy a long-awaited honeymoon and choose to travel to Jerusalem at Christmastime. If you could plan a special trip anywhere in the world, where would you go?
6. One theme of Christmas Jars Reunion is fulfilling dreams—both your dreams and the dreams of others. Discuss the dreams of Hope, Al, and Clark. How are they similar? How are they different? Which of them, if any, have their dreams come true?
Christmas Jars Reunion Page 14