By Esther C. Baird, first published in the Ipswich Local News, December 14 2023
Well, it’s December. Regular readers know of my need for lots of Christmas lights to escape the pitch-blackness that is this month.
I’ll spare you my annual rant about my window candles on a [not functioning] timer, though you should know that this year we added a plastic Bernese mountain dog covered in multi-colored lights that sits outside our door.
It’s beyond tacky, and yet it brings me joy (mostly what brings me joy is that its light timer actually works).
When not fighting with the decorations, I’ve been busy with the release of my third book, The Healed Heart of Christmas. It explores all the ways we freak out this time of year (writers write what they know) and how I understand the beliefs of my Christian faith to provide hope and answers.
Part of a publishing a book is signing that book. So, a week or so ago, when the sun was still in the sky and I wasn’t groping around by starlight at 4 p.m., I was signing away.
My book contains 25 short daily blurbs. It’s like reading this column every day (which, yes, that’s a lot of Esther — I realize that’s not for everyone). The point is that it’s a thin book. But the copy that I went to sign was noticeably thicker. So, I flipped through the pages.
And there, in the middle of my book, were words that were not mine. As in not my book at all. I kept perusing and realized that this particular copy of my book had a separate book printed between my pages 52 and 53.
It didn’t make sense. My book has an ISBN number! You can find it on Amazon! It’s not like I printed it off my home printer. And yet here, mysteriously, was someone else’s book — someone named Fred Waddell, who also published a book this fall that is titled Better Than Advice.
In some inexplicable printing error, his book had been printed into this singular copy of my book.
A book about advice … when my goal was to steer people away from all the advice we get from social media and TV and towards the only truth I find to be solid.
Mr. Waddell was, per his bio also found in my book, almost 90 and a former professor at Auburn University.
As I read his book, I saw that his main suggestion for helping others that was “better than advice” was to ask them a series of questions instead of dishing out opinions. And this hinged around what he called the “miracle question.”
This posited: If they had a miracle in their life that night to change whatever problem they were facing, what would tomorrow look like? What would that miracle mean for them?
Well. That’s a good question.
What if we had a miracle tonight? What if the sun set at 9 p.m. tomorrow, or the candles turned on at 5 p.m. when they were supposed to? What if tomorrow our car was fixed or our job got better?
What if our miracle tomorrow meant family lived nearby instead of far away? Or our friend wasn’t sick? What if tomorrow we woke up and the wars overseas were over? What if tomorrow we actually did feel hope? Or peace? Or joy?
What if a miracle occurred?
I don’t know Fred, and so far I haven’t been able to find him (if you know him send him my way!). He doesn’t know his book is inside my book. It’s just this quirky thing that happened this December, along with the broken lights and tacky dog and scramble to find stocking stuffers.
But I like it.
My book is about hearts that have problems (lots of problems, but I limited it to 25). Healed hearts imply hearts that were first broken. Hearts that need a miracle.
At Christmas, I celebrate that 2,000 years ago a miracle did occur. And ever since, we can actually have real peace. Real joy. (Fine. We can’t apparently have functioning widow candles). Real hope.
Maybe, this Christmas, we can live like the miracle question is one we can truly ask — and that an answer is available for us all.