This is not my own Christmas miracle story, but it is a true story, told by my friend Linda Fairbanks of Raymond, Alberta. This happened to her cousin, James Wilding, who is a postal worker in upstate New York:
A postal Christmas story...(and it's true.)
I'm training a new sub at the post office, and on Saturday and he's casing the mail (that's sorting the letters and magazines and all the other stuff people complain about all the time). He holds up a piece of mail and asks, "what should I do with this?" 'Piece of mail' was being generous. It was two pieces of paper...the front and back of an envelope. I explained that even though it's just the shredded remains of an envelope with no contents, we still have to deliver it as it has an address and postage on it. So I show him where the body bags are (plastic bags to hold the damaged remains printed with an apology message for mangling the item and a statement declaring "we care" which no one actually believes because we are the "huge, bureaucratic, unfeeling corporation". I really don't like having to do this because I work with people that really do take great care with the job they do. It's just that sometimes the sorting machines will damage one of the millions of pieces of mail that get processed daily.
An hour or two pass when I'm approached by a co-worker from a few cases away. "Do you know these people?" She had been sorting her mail and had come across a Christmas card with a few names (no surnames), some school pictures, and no address. Nope. I don't recognize the pictures and with just 4 random first names...not a clue. And then I thought (and you probably see where I'm going with the story) "she has a card with no envelope or address and I have the remains of an envelope with no contents...I wonder..." I searched through the mail my sub had cased to find the plastic bag with the envelope bits. No first name on the envelope, just "The 'X' Family." So I pulled out other pieces of mail and found one that had a name that matched one of the names in the card. A little exciting. Both the card and the envelope were written with a non-standard pen color (red). A little more excited. And finally (even though I'm not a handwriting expert) there were several letters common to both card and envelope that had some pretty unique characteristics. Very excited. Enough that I feel confident that we have a match.
What are the chances that my new sub would ask me about a specific piece of mail? That a co-worker several cases away would find a piece of mail and come show it to me (and nobody else first)?
So I reunited the envelope shreds and card and pictures in the body bag to deliver them. The cynical part of me can only think that this family will never know what an amazing thing just happened. That when they see this cheesy 'we care' bag full of their shredded Christmas card they'll think that "the rotten mailman ripped open our card looking for a gift card or money to steal" and that's not the case at all. It was a postal miracle that this all came together the way it did.
...And then I thought, "how many times have I done that?" How many times have I been upset with something in my life because it wasn't perfectly the way I had expected it to be rather than acknowledging that God had accomplished a miracle by getting it to me at all.
Something to ponder.
So that's my postal miracle Christmas story.
