Believe

Picture if you will, a flower shop two days before Christmas.

Everyone is totaled and all the designers hands are laced with invisible pieces of cedar. The aloe vera plant is our best friend.

We have circles under our eyes (our red eyes),band aids on our fingers and a box full of orders to fill.

Customers are dropping off presents, and containers for us to fill.

The same 5 CD's we'd been playing for 2 weeks are still playing.

We pop another cookie or white chocolate pretzel in our mouths, take another hit of coffee and keep on keeping on.

Betty, the talent, has a monster migraine but just keeps churning out masterpieces.

She has forgotten her medicine at home so makes do with Advil. Advil is not the answer.

We try to keep it down but can't stop the holiday madness.

Then Betty gets a phone call from her friend Carlos.  She thought he was in Bolivia visiting his wife Gladys, she's been living there for 4 years while going through the immigration process .

He's been here in Virginia with the 2 children, one 12 the other 9. He flies them to her in the summer and on school vacations. He is both mother and father to them while working more hours in a day then we can imagine.

Now there's a 1 year old with her mother.

This summer Betty asked me to write a letter to the judge who would hear Carlo's petition to bring Gladys back to the States.  She gave me her feelings and I put them into words.

It was one of 4 letters.

When Carlos called her today he was in our parking lot, he had to leave Bolivia early, he needed to see her.

Betty flew outside and when she did, she said her head popped open.

For there was Gladys and the new baby Iris.

Home for Christmas. Legally here. Good to stay.

Betty brought them in to meet me.  "This is Gladys" she told me, she's come home". "This is my amiga Jane, she told them. She wrote the letter".

I just started crying. And hugging everybody and crying some more.

Florists are very emotional.

I'm sure they wondered who this amiga loca of Betty's was.

Legally Gladys could have been made to stay there 10 more years. Her oldest daughter would have been 22 by the time she returned to Virginia.

It's a Christmas miracle. It brought smiles to our faces, made migraines disappear and allowed us to fly through the rest of our day with hearts filled with gratitude for a compassionate judge and a good lawyer.

And I had to share the joy.

And the tears.

Don't give up before the miracle?

I get it now.