I felt horrible. I couldn’t believe I had done it to them.

I love Christmas cards! They are still up on my bulletin boards now, because the bulletin boards were put on the wall just for that purpose. The cards will likely remain there until replaced next year!

I love the photos – particularly the photos of my friends. (Come on, people! Don’t chicken out from the camera and make your kids get in front of it! I like to see YOU! 🙂 ) I love the plain cards; I love the fancy ones. I love the cards from family, from best friends and from “strangers” whom we met only once overseas in years past.

I actually even enjoy most “Christmas update letters,” because I care what is going on in people’s lives; but I admittedly often wait until after the new year to read some of them.  I have friends who collect the cards in a basket and spend the year taking one card out each day at dinnertime and praying for the family who sent it. Sorry we have never gotten that organized, but I love the idea!

My love for receiving those cards is probably why I felt so horrible about what I did.

I ditched a friend. Hear me out: I have over five thousand contacts in my phone. I know…crazy! I started an electronic address book back in the 90’s (1890’s it feels like!) with my “Palm Pilot,” and have electronically transferred the book with each new device and update. It is my “Roledex” from the 1870’s with a new twist. I never see a reason to delete anyone – because who knows if our paths could cross?

Rather than going through 5,000 contacts to send cards to less than 10% every year, I finally made a Christmas card list of people I think might “want” one. But last year, I noticed a name was missing. (Sorry if your name was missing too! I didn’t mean it!) Since the list was from the year before, it meant that the Kirk and Cassie Birtles family had not received a card from me.

I texted my good friend Cassie: “Did I send you a Christmas card last year?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

What? I didn’t send her a card and she didn’t even seem to mind?! She is so kindly unpresumptuous.

That January, her husband let the cat out of the bag in a humorous way. He had me laughing out loud. Apparently, when our card didn’t arrive, they had assumed I had not sent out cards. But when Kirk and Cassie went to a friend’s house, there was the Brady Christmas card prominently displayed, so they deduced that their friend must have ranked more highly with the Bradys than the Birtles did!

Then they went to Kirk’s sister’s house (whom we had befriended through Kirk)- and there was the Brady Christmas card. The story kept getting deeper when they went to Kirk’s parents’ house (whom we befriended through Kirk and his sister) and there, on their fridge, prominently displayed were the Brady kids and parents, wishing all of the other Birtleses a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! All of the Birtleses…except Kirk and Cassie. They were left with a blank fridge. 🙂

Apparently, it happened for two years before I noticed that their name had inadvertently been eliminated from my list of cards.

WHAT A MESS!

I felt horrible.

It reminded me of what great friends the Birtles truly are:

• They gave me the benefit of the doubt, assuming the best intentions on my part.
• They didn’t discuss it behind my back and hope I got the message. (Well – maybe they did and I don’t know, since I wasn’t behind my back.)
• They didn’t remove me from their Christmas card list; I still got their wishes to have a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” because their wishes for me told me about their heart, not as payback for my own.

I told them I was so sorry, and made sure their address was on my list! I checked it twice! But then, I decided to try to make it up to them- and make them laugh too.

Fun Friends

I went through my files and found one of our Christmas cards from every year…as long as I have been sending them – since around 1897 🙂 . I wanted to make sure the Birtles family knew they were loved.

I copied each card, put them in separate envelopes and started sending them daily at the beginning of December. “Merry Christmas and Happy 1998!” was the first message they received. Next was 1999, 2000 and so on, all the way to “I hope your 2016 is blessed!” in this year’s card.

However, the company I used to make the cards for this year, Nations Photo Lab, made a mistake on my cards. When I brought the mistake to their attention, their customer service was amazing, and they immediately sent out a new box of Brady Christmas cards…which meant that I had literally hundreds of extra Christmas cards (the mistakes), so I thought it was well worth the postage to send the ENTIRE BOX of HUNDREDS of Brady Christmas cards to the Birtleses for their amusement.

I giggled all eighteen times I walked to my North Carolina mailbox- and hoped they were having as much fun at the Michigan end. Haha!!

Just to top it off, I sent a text around January 4^th. to Kirk and Cassie:  ^“Did you get a Christmas card from us this year?????”; I wanted to be sure they weren’t forgotten. 🙂

They replied to my text, “Who is this?”

Haha!

Then, yesterday, the season of Joy was wrapped with a beautiful bow when a package arrived from Michigan. 

The Birtleses had sweetly modge-podged all of my Christmas cards onto a twenty-four inch letter “B”!!! Yay! It looks beautiful in my house – as if I planned for someone to creatively display all of my past Christmas cards!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…

My daughter (age 12) immediately asked when she saw the artwork, “Does this mean they used all of the cards we sent, so now they don’t have any pictures of us in their house?”

Bahaha! Maybe we need to send some more!

SUCH. GREAT. FRIENDS!

I like to say:

“Imperfect moments make perfect memories.”

But maybe in this case, it is better said, “Messy moments make magnificent friends.”

If it hadn’t started so messy – with my accidental deletion of their name – it never would have ended so memorable! So if you are in the middle of a “mess”…just wait! There may be magnificence in the making!

God bless you and your messy-memory-making with FRIENDS,

Terri

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis

“Wounds from a friend can be trusted; but an enemy multiplies kisses.” –Proverbs 27:6

Related Posts:

• Buffaloes and Butterflies (Creating friendships with different species)
• When Pain Mocks the Song – Even in the Christmas Update Letter
• Shine on a Parade