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The Miracle of the Green Christmas Stocking
The author lives in California, USA.
How would we ever find a single stocking amid 165+ overflowing carts of donated goods?
In February while cleaning out my garage, I decided to donate a trunk load of Christmas decorations, since all my children are now grown. About two weeks after dropping them off at a thrift store, I mentioned the donations to my daughter, Kim. She exclaimed, “Mom, you still have my green Christmas stocking, I hope?” Sadly, I had to tell her I had just given it away!
I’d made the stockings for our six young children out of felt. Their names were penned in silver glitter across the top. Kim had insisted she wanted a green Christmas stocking even though everyone else had red. I didn’t realize after all these years that it still meant so much to her. I felt bad that I had given her stocking away, so I decided to call the thrift store to see if I could get it back somehow.
Tara, the manager, asked if it was put in a silver cart or a blue cart. I didn’t know because a worker took the boxes and bags out of my trunk, and I wasn’t paying attention to what carts they were put in. She told me there were about a hundred silver carts and 68 blue carts filled to the top and not stored in any particular order! Tara said that in all the years she has worked there, she has never known anyone to find something after they donated it by mistake. But she would be happy to go with me to look in the sorting room.
I drove to the store with a constant prayer in my heart that Heavenly Father would help me to find the green Christmas stocking, acknowledging that it would mean so much to my daughter. We have been commanded, after all, to “cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household. … Let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you” (Alma 34:21, 27).
As Elder Juan A. Uceda of the Seventy taught: “At the very moment we say, ‘Father in Heaven,’ He hears our prayers and is sensitive to us and our needs. And so His eyes and His ears are now connected to you. … He will see you with eyes of love and mercy—love and mercy that we cannot fully understand. But love and mercy are with Him the very moment you say, ‘Father in Heaven.’”1
I started looking through the Christmas items on the shelves in the main part of the store, but the stocking wasn’t there. I met Tara, and she walked with me into the sorting room.
Where to begin! As we walked past row after row of silver carts towering over us, I tried to quickly scan the contents of each one. Tara grabbed a random cart and rolled it forward so I could see the side of the cart next to it. I looked up and immediately recognized a cardboard box with my handwriting on the side (“electric lights and adapter”). The security guard took it down for me, but inside was just the Dutch oven I’d donated.
I walked around the cart to the other side. On top of another box, I saw the green felt Christmas stocking sticking out of a white plastic bag. To everyone’s amazement, we had found what I was looking for!
Tara said, “You have to take a picture from upstairs so Kim can see the magnitude of what just happened!”
Of all the places we could have looked, we went right to where we needed to be. “Luck,” some might say. No. “Coincidence?” No. Evidence that we have a kind and loving Heavenly Father who answers even the most trivial but heartfelt prayers according to His wisdom and will? Definitely! Although not all prayers are answered so immediately or in the way we hoped, this was a miracle for us that day!
Now, each year as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, hanging on Kim’s fireplace will be a gentle reminder of the miracle of the green Christmas stocking—evidence of Heavenly Father’s love for His children.