A Simple Christmas by Mike Huckabee

Author:Mike Huckabee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

7.

Hope

By the end of the year, Janet and I were glad to get 1975 behind us. A year of progressively worse struggles and downward spirals had left us to believe that we would surely have a better Christmas the next year. We weren’t disappointed!

When we got back to Fort Worth after the brief Christmas visit to our families in Hope, it was like starting all over again. We lived in a new place in a new town, and I was starting graduate school in a new environment. Janet was getting stronger and healthier each day, and soon we would both start looking for new jobs.

We had learned during the previous year just how insignificant material things really are in the hierarchy of values. When you aren’t sure if you’re going to be alive in a few months, having “things” suddenly doesn’t seem so important. Janet and I had started our marriage with pretty much nothing, and before we had even reached our second anniversary, we had reduced that by quite a bit! But after the crisis we had just been through, we didn’t seem to mind not having a lot of “stuff.” Having next to nothing can be a blessing in that it lets you fully appreciate what little you do have, and more important, it makes you grateful that you still have the one thing that does matter—life itself.

Janet found a job as a dental assistant for a dentist whose office was very near our house and the seminary. It was a perfect job for her, and while the pay wasn’t great, it was adequate, and the dentist, Dr. Harold Cohen, was very good to her. He had been an army dentist for several years before going into private practice, and in many ways he still had the military mind-set of how to run things. Janet loved working for him, and although the money was critical for us, her ability to work again was a true blessing in that it affirmed just how alive she was. In a strange way, coming so close to death really brings you closer to life. Those who have stood in the shadow of death quickly learn to appreciate the simple things that remind them, “You are alive.” You realize that a job is more than employment; it’s a sign of hope and optimism that you are going to be around a while and that there is a future being planned with you in it.

I had come to Fort Worth with the anticipation of working for a Christian ministry that had planned on hiring me, but by the time I arrived, the finances of the organization were strained and it was unable to offer me a job. That forced me to hit the streets looking for something—anything—so we could survive. I had completed my training and clinical work to be an EMT and applied at several ambulance services and emergency rooms, but either they weren’t hiring or I didn’t have enough experience to work in the “big city.

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