Re:  Gino (23 Dec 2025)

I wonder if I maybe shouldn't have?

 

    I can see why someone would agonize over as you have, so let your conscience be your guide.  Nevertheless, here's why - from my own experiences - you don't need to worry.

 

    When we attempted to adopt a child of mixed ethnicity in 1981, we named him Benjamin.  The adoption fell through when the birth mother -- at just a few days before the 6 mos. deadline by CA law to make up her mind -- asked for her child back.  We'd had him since birth.  It hurt even worse when we found out she didn't intend to keep him.  She wanted to give him to an older couple who were childless and of mixed ethnicity that she had met during that 6 months waiting period.

 

    I found two things I wanted from a catalog that year to give Benjamin should we get him back and I didn't tell anyone about it: 

 

    1)  An Advent calendar for Christmas so he could open up a different window each day and learn something about Christmas;

 

    2)  A $400.00 handsome fur-covered rocking horse from Fao Schwarz store in New York.  It came with all the trappings one could dream of for riding a horse (i.e., saddle; stirrups; straps).

 

    The birthmother said we could have her son visit us at Thanksgiving and Christmas that year because she would have to work.  Unfortunately, a jealous babysitter got in the way and prevented that from happening.  I was hiding my tears at Thanksgiving early one morning when my dad, who was visiting for the holidays, left to go to town.  When he returned, he brought me a gift.  To my utter surprise, it was an Advent calendar.  I got suspicious that God was trying to tell me something because, though he was a minister, he never used Advent calendars in his ministry.  So why now?  Besides, it was only Thanksgiving; not Christmas.  He didn't have to buy me a gift yet.  He didn't even know I wanted an Advent calendar for Benjamin.

 

    Then at Christmas that year a pregnant woman -- whose boyfriend had left her -- was staying with us until she could get her own place.  She racked up our utility costs with a little heater.  She and my husband came from origins known for hot tempers.  My husband (German/Irish descent), wanted to ask her (red-haired Irish) about helping with the utility bill, but I told him I would try to bring it up gently to her.

 

    When I asked her nicely about it, she was immediately angry at my husband.  Her stinging rebuke was, "It's a good thing you are never going to get Benjamin back because you couldn't afford to take care of him!"  I knew this wasn't true as we had been taking care of both her and Benjamin for six months.  She was just trying to be mean and the devil was 'upping the ante' by using her as his advocate.  I didn't let her know how badly she had hurt me though.  I silently finished what I was doing in the kitchen, then just left quietly, went to my bedroom and closed the door.

 

    In my room I buried my face in my pillow and silently cried myself to sleep.  The next morning when I got up, I went to the kitchen and was surprised to see three things on the counter:  1)  Xmas cookies; 2) a Christmas caroller figurine; and 3) a rocking horse 

Christmas tree ornament for hanging on a tree.  It blew me away!  I knew this wasn't a coincidence.  Now I was sure God was giving me clues from Heaven about our desire to have Benjamin back because I found it was sent by my husband's parents the night before as Christmas gift emblems from their nationwide missionary speaking tour.  They knew nothing about my desire for a rocking horse for Benjamin. 

 

    As it turned out, many supernatural clues later occurred over a period of 5 years.  Five years later, we were given another opportunity to adopt a baby boy which was made legal at Christmas.  His last name was "King."  So I finally figured out the meaning of those supernatural clues given us five years before:

 

    1)  Christmas caroller figurine:  We had cause to give thanks, sing and rejoice that Thanksgiving and count the days until some future Christmas for a gift that was coming.

 

    2)  Christmas tree ornament - rocking horse:  Some future Christmas gift would have to do with a baby boy.

 

    So I figured out the Christmas caroller ornament song was like Joy to the World:  "Joy to the Ruhls a child will come.  Let them receive their *king" (*his last name).  We didn't know his last name would be "king," so we didn't figure that one out until many years later.  Putting it all together, God was telling us in 1981 at Thanksgiving and Christmas that -- in spite of deep grief, tears and heartache -- we had cause to give thanks, sing and rejoice and count the days until Christmas for a baby boy that God, in His love for us, would give us some future Christmas, just as He gave His son, an infant, as a gift of love to this world one Christmas 2,000 years ago. 

 

     Even though a December Christmas wasn't Jesus' real birth date, and there was no rocking horse in the Biblical nativity story, God still honored it for the sake of the clues in order to give us hope.  So, since He did that for us, I'm certain He honors efforts to remember Him at that time of the year; such as:  Giving gifts; singing Christmas carols; celebrating made-up stories of gift-givers, like Santa, who delivers the gifts with help from reindeer; and toys like rocking horses, etc. in a fun way, symbolic of the real story of Christmas.

 

    As though once wasn't enough, God did a similar thing the first year we were raising our son whose birth name was "King."  He gave me a dream while our son was still in diapers, depicting him -- with a ruler in his hand -- running to me to get away from a school principal and a minister who were angry because they wanted that ruler he had in his hand.  The minister said, "That boy needs to be in Sunday School!" 

 

    When our son was in about 5th grade, a school principal called me one day wanting to punish our son for talking back to the teacher.  My son approached me and said "Mom, I hate school because I can't creative.  I have to do what the teacher tells me to do."  Then he blew me away with "I want to be the principal!  I want to make the rules!"  I knew immediately that dream had come true in that moment.

 

    So, one day, when he was in his early teens, he was playing with a Yak Bak toy from Toys R Us."  You speak into it and hit playback.  It plays "Bak your Yak" by repeating what you said backwards.  He tried speaking his adopted name and nothing happened.  So he got creative and tried his birth name "baby boy King."  To our utter astonishment it came back with "Needs to be obedient."  We both got a good laugh out of that.

 

    Amazingly, God used that secular toy from the Far East to deliver a difficult message in a fun way for easy acceptance just as He used the ideas of a spiritual Christmas with its secular emblems (toys, reindeer, Santa (gift-giver as God is a gift-giver, etc,) to deliver a powerful message five years prior to his birth.  So if God can use secular things about Christmas to deliver a spiritual message, so can we.  After hearing the Yak Bak's response to his name my son then said to me, "Do you get it mom?  'Baby boy king born to rule/Ruhl.' (Ruhl is our family's last name).  ;0  God is so awesome!

 

    BTW, just in case you or someone you know might be interested -- I just published a book on the above and much more; for example:  Falling off a launch with a load of timber toppling on top of me into the deepest known ocean in the world -- the Mindanao Deep; being chased through jungles by wild animals and an angry man with a long sword; encountering a sea monster that threatened to capsize our ship; a man sending me a threatening letter stating he was coming to kill me (for no known reason) and then showing up for that purpose while I was working in the US Attorney's Office in San Francisco; helping the IRS, Criminal Division, solve a case about a man promoting a pyramid scheme while bilking his followers of large sums of money; a number of true charming animal stories with supernatural elements showing animals go to Heaven; and more in an autobiography of my life.

 

    Not surprisingly, God gave me the idea of calling the book "Clues From Heaven."  I prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is a "God factor" working behind the scenes to take the bad things that happen to us and turn them around for our good, to give us, like He says "a future and hope."  The book is available online at the following website:  https://christianfaithpublishing.com/books/?book=clues-from-heaven or at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Kindle.com, etc. and 10,000 'brick and mortar' stores worldwide.