Merry Christmas Friends,
Please take a few moments to read "A Different Christmas Poem":
"The embers glowed
softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the
sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that
was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was
deep,
Secure and surrounded by
love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or
so it would seem,
So slumbered I, perhaps I
started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud,
and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my
ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,
Then the sure sound of
footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who
was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of
the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and
tight.
A soldier, I puzzled,
some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Trooper, huddled here in the
cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my
child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without
fear,
"Come in this moment. It's freezing
out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from
your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas
Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in
drifts.
To the window that danced with a warm
fire's light
Then he sighed and he said, "It's really
all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every
night."
To fight for our rights
back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how
long.
For when we come home, either standing or
dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
May we always remember our Service Men & Women during this Christmas season
