An Orphan Christmas

It’s late Christmas morning and there isn’t a sound in the orphanage. All the children have been woken up by the busy street outside the window. Everyone is busy, going from house to house, but the children in the orphanage are quietly sitting on their beds staring at either the wall or down at their feet. There is complete silence within the walls, but on the outside it is the opposite. Their is no tree or decoration and devastating enough their are no boxes or bags with bows or ribbons.

As she walks in, the head of the orphanage sees the grim looks on the children and sighs and begins to talk.

I’m so sorry. I wish we could’ve had a merrier Christmas, I really do. I..we…the orphanage..there just wasn’t enough founding.

All the orphans look around and try to smile and shrug it off, but it doesn’t fool the head mistress. She knows how much they wanted to be able to experience a normal Christmas.

The wood creaks as the head mistress walks away from the petite room and marches to her office. She sits down at her desk and boldly picks up the phone, and begins to dial. Half way through she stops, looks up, and sighs. One of the little boys is standing at her door.

It’s okay Miss we know you’ve done all you can. We can have a good Christmas without all of the gifts and decorations.

The head mistress smiles slightly and tells the boy thank you and he walks back up to their room. She stares at the phone. She was half way there, half way to complaining, and half way to being told again that there is nothing they can do. She sets the phone back down and looks down at her hands. Most of the kids here have never had a real Christmas, but none of them have the heart to ask for one. She decides that the people at the other end of the phone line are right. They can’t do anything about it. It’s been a long time since she has sat down and prayed, a very very long time, but somehow she knew that was the only way a Christmas miracle could come to the smallest orphanage in the city, so she prayed. She prayed for a while simply asking, but began to explain, explain why it’d been so long, and explain why they deserved it so much. I sat there with my eyes closed and my hands clasped for a few minutes and I glanced up. I knew it wasn’t just going to appear but I wished it would.

She looked at her desk, realizing the amount of work she had to do and so she began to work. About thirty minutes after she’d started to work the same boy that had told her just an hour ago that it was okay that they didn’t get a Christmas was smiling in my doorway. The grin had completely taken over and he literally looked like a kid on Christmas morning, and it was so beautiful.

Someone is at the door.

That is all the gay little boy said. She looked very perplexed as she got up and headed to the front of the orphanage. As she reached the door, she glanced through the opening in the door. What laid on the other side of the door was greater than any of the children could ever imagine.

On the other side of the door was two everyday people carrying two of the largest red sacks you could ever imagine, and smiling a humble and gleeful smile. This was it, the first and last Christmas miracle the orphanage will ever receive.