Favorite Christmas Gift

What little girl hasn’t spent weeks...even months....leading up to Christmas anticipating her gifts? From the time I could walk, I knew what I wanted for Christmas, for my birthday...the ultimate gift for a little girl. Not a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, but something even better: a pony. My mother took me for rides on her horse before I could walk, so I came by this pony obsession honestly. The first thing I learned to draw was a pony. I could think of nothing else. I practiced drawing ponies, tried out pony names, and practiced riding on the full-sized wooden pony my mother had built me in the back yard.

Every Christmas, every birthday, I left my wish list out for my parents, adorned with my drawing of a pony named Chester, my friend Tootie’s little pony. Every birthday, every Christmas, it was the same list: “1. I want a ponie.” There never was a “Number 2” on my list.

Every birthday, every Christmas, my hope went unfulfilled. No pony. But one very special Christmas, when I was six, I received the most amazing gift: a western pony saddle. It was rich caramel colored, with fancy carving and a brass horn. It wasn’t the pony I longed for, but it was a gift of hope for a day to come. This pony saddle was a sort of deposit in my heart. I now knew one day, I would get a pony.

Not too many months later, I did get that pony. How happy I was to put my little saddle—the symbol of a hope--on her back for the first time!

God sends us symbols of hope at Christmas. He reminds us that He sent His only son, a baby, who would one day die for us. The most wonderful news is that we don’t have to wait.

~ Adrea Thomas