Another Outer Banks Christmas was meant to be a light-hearted novella for the holidays. However, I have a difficult time doing light (even though people who have read it say it’s fun or cute or great). For me, there were parts that were heart-breaking. To be truthful, a retired English professor from the college where I wrote told an audience recently that my books are more real than a Hallmark movie (not that I’d turn one down). My stories are real.
In Outer Banks Christmas, we see two very different families—one so close that it hurts to separate and the other broken apart.
Matthew 5:23- 24: “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
The heroine in the story, Kerrie Alexander, is the daughter of missionaries. Even though she’s a grown woman, she still lives at home because her family is home to her. However, when her parents decide to return to the mission field and leave Hatteras Island—a place where she has made friends and connected with a church and a special someone (who has yet to ask her on a date but yes).
On the other hand, Firefighter/EMT Wade Hampton has been estranged from much of his family since his teenage years. At sixteen, as a smart aleck kid, he drew the ire of his new stepmother, and his father kicked him out. His grandfather, Moose Hampton, took him in and has been his whole family.
All this changes over the course of one Christmas.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
When Kerrie hears her parents say they are being sent to the Dominican Republic, her life changes. She wants to stay in Hatteras.
Wade doesn’t want her to leave. His grandfather wants him to get married and offers an ultimatum.
Not to tell the whole story (please read the book), but the story shows that God, in fiction, as in real life, makes everything beautiful.
In your life, in my life, sometimes it seems like we’re going down the wrong path or not moving at all, please remember that we are in God’s world. Yes, it is a broken world, but He will comfort you and be with you in all things.
Blessings and Merry Christmas in the spring (and all year around, let us celebrate Christ’s birth as we anticipate his resurrection in anticipation of Easter!).