Free A Treasury of Christmas Miracles by Karen Kingsbury Page A

Laura looked up at her.
    “C’mon, Mommy,” the child said. “Walk.”
    Cara stood unmoving, staring back toward her house and straining to see the children. She wondered if perhaps they had gotten
     scared of the dark and decided to go back home. Then the thought occurred to her that perhaps someone had snatched them. The
     neighborhood was often a frightening place, and crimes were committed around them each day. Suddenly Cara began to panic.
    “Sarah!” she called out. “Joey!”
    There was no response and Cara could feel herself actually shaking in fear. Quickly she turned around, tightened her grip
     on Laura’s hand, and began heading back toward the apartment.
    As they walked, Cara noticed a man across the street who was headed in the same direction. Cara wondered where he had come
     from, since the few times she had looked back to check her children she hadn’t noticed him. Although she was preoccupied with
     finding Joey and Sarah, Cara noticed that the man across the street kept looking at them. Since she did not recognize him
     as someone who lived in the neighborhood, Cara began to be suspicious of the man and picked up her pace, sweeping Laura into
     her arms. In one hand she held the riding toy and decided she would use it in self-defense if necessary.
    “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Laura asked, aware of her mother’s nervousness.
    “Nothing, honey. We’re going home now.”
    As Cara and her daughter neared the corner of her apartment building, the man began crossing the street at an angle headed
     in their direction. Terror raced through Cara’s body, and she wondered if she could reach her apartment in time if he tried
     to accost them.
    At that instant a thought came to Cara.
    Pretend you see your father at the front door and talk to him,
a voice seemed to say.
    Instantly Cara acted on the suggestion.
    “Hi, Dad!” she yelled, waving in the direction of her apartment, still four units away. “Have you seen the kids?”
    Almost at once the man who had been headed straight for her turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. Cara
     breathed a sigh of relief. She had tricked him into thinking that her father was really at the door.
    Cara ran up her apartment steps and dashed inside. Her fears alleviated, Cara saw Joey and Sarah on the floor watching television
     as they had been when she left.
    “Why’d you guys come back home?” she asked. “Did something scare you? What?”
    The children looked blankly at their mother and then at each other. “What do you mean?” Joey asked.
    “You were outside, following me. I saw you. Why’d you come back inside?”
    Colin looked at his mother then and shook his head.
    “Mom, they’ve been right here the whole time,” he said simply. “They didn’t want to go, remember?”
    “That’s impossible,” she said, moving slowly toward the chair. “I saw you both. Following behind us, and when I couldn’t see
     you anymore, I turned around.”
    Then Cara remembered the strange man. For the next thirty minutes she tried to explain to Colin about the man and how threatened
     she had felt.
    “Mom, maybe the kids you saw were angels and the only way they knew to get you to come back home was to make themselves look
     like Joey and Sarah. You know, Christmas angels.”
    Cara stared at her son. She had been thinking the same thing, but was afraid she’d sound crazy. But why not? Wouldn’t it have
     been fitting for God to use angels who looked like her kids? Her precious children.
    “I don’t know, son. But I’m sure I saw the kids outside tonight.”
    Cara told everyone who would listen about the story of what happened on her walk, but it wasn’t until later that she came
     to believe without a doubt that a miracle had occurred that night. It turned out that the man who had been trailing her was
     an escaped felon from the state prison. Until his recapture, he carried a gun, robbing people in Cara’s neighborhood at gunpoint.
    “I