A Treasury of Christmas Miracles by Karen Kingsbury Read Free Book Online Page B

us? It seems
     like he should want to be with us more than with his patients.”
    Hank was such a happy, good-natured man that the children felt foolish voicing any complaints at all except to each other.
     But still they missed their father and once in a while continued to wonder about how much he loved them.
    Time passed, and Hank’s health declined rapidly. He had been diagnosed years before with a disease that made him prone to
     seizures. But it wasn’t until ten years later that he began degenerating and finally had to give up his practice.
    He finally succumbed to his illness after making peace with each of his children. Throughout the final days of his life it
     was often Barbara and Lou who took turns waiting on him and comforting him.
    “What are we going to do without him?” Barbara asked her brother not long after the funeral. “I can’t imagine living in a
     world where he’s not around.”
    Lou nodded. Their family had been raised to love God and obey the Bible. He knew that his father was in heaven. But still,
     the pain of losing him was almost too much to bear. Especially after coming to understand in his father’s final years just
     how much the man loved him.
    “I don’t know, Barbara,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “But I know that what Dad taught us is true. He’s in
     heaven and one day we’ll go to live with him there and we’ll all be together again. What a homecoming that’ll be, huh?”
    Barbara smiled through her tears. “Yeah, and in heaven he won’t have to make house calls.”
    In the decade that followed, although the rest of Barbara’s siblings all went their own ways, Barbara became very attached
     to her brother Lou. Shortly after Lou joined the Navy, she, too, joined. When Lou finished serving his time, he married, taught
     college, and eight years later moved to San Diego, where he began working on his second master’s degree at the University
     of San Diego.
    After serving a double hitch in the Navy, Barbara also moved to San Diego and found a house just a few miles from Lou’s. She,
     too, began attending the university.
    Lou worried about his sister’s lack of independence. “I know she wants to get married and have a family of her own,” he confided
     to his wife, Anna, one day. “But all she does is go to school, work, and sit home, in front of the television set. She can’t
     expect to meet someone living like that.”
    Anna angled her head thoughtfully. “I think it’s just going to take more time with Barbara. She’s starting to come out of
     her shell some, and once she has her degree she’ll feel a lot better about things. Don’t worry about her.”
    Besides, it wasn’t as if Barbara didn’t have a family. She did. Over the next fifteen years Lou and Anna raised four children,
     and Barbara was always at the center of their family outings.
    Over time, Barbara earned a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation and began working in an alcohol-recovery center. Her patients
     ranged from hopeless adults to troubled teens, and Barbara worked tirelessly with them.
    As Barbara became more involved with her patients, Lou and Anna began to notice a change in her.
    “You know,” Lou said one night as he and his wife washed dinner dishes together at the kitchen sink, “all of us kids growing
     up used to think there was something wrong with Barbara. We thought she’d never amount to much, I guess because she was so
     alone and never did the things the rest of us did.”
    He paused a moment before continuing. “But that isn’t true at all. She’s got her education and a wonderful job. She gives
     hope to people who have none, and for dozens of her patients she’s the greatest gift God has ever given them.”
    “I told you, Lou,” Anna said warmly. “You used to worry so much about Barbara.”
    “I still worry about her because she has no family of her own. All she’s ever really wanted is a family.”
    “She’s growing at her own