Black Shoes & Christmas

By Cecil Murphey

Our commander announced a dress inspection for Saturday—four days before Christmas vacations began. My shoes, barely acceptable for daily duty, wouldn’t stand up under inspection. I needed a pair of black, Navy-regulation shoes.

In transferring me to Great Lakes, Illinois, six weeks before Christmas, the Navy had lost my pay records and allotted me ten dollars a month for incidentals. (It would be February before they realized they had been spelling my name incorrectly.) I didn’t know anyone well enough to borrow money from. My commander wouldn’t let me out of the inspection even though I volunteered for extra duty. What am I going to do? I asked myself repeatedly.

Late Thursday night in desperation, I walked into the dimly lit chapel and sat in the last row. For a long time, I tried to form prayers that refused to come.

Then I remembered a time in childhood when I had needed a pair of shoes. Two days before Christmas Mom still hadn’t said anything about our presents. At the sink I soaped a plate and rinsed it. “Elmer’s getting a dog for Christmas.”

Instead of taking the plate from me, Mom shook her head slowly. She didn’t look at me, but even at nine years old, I sensed something wasn’t right. Before I could ask what was wrong, she removed her glasses and polished them with the bottom of her apron. “We won’t have any Christmas this year.”

“Dad’s working again,” I said. He had been sick for two months but had gone back to work after Thanksgiving.

“There…isn’t…any…money.” She burst into tears and buried her head in her apron. Dad’s first check had gone for rent, groceries, and gas for his car. Mom picked up her purse, fumbled inside the money section, and emptied its contents on the kitchen table. A dime and three pennies rolled across the checkered oil cloth. “That’s all the money until after Christmas when your dad gets paid again.”

“God will give us what we ask for,” I said. “See, Mrs. Garbie [my Sunday school teacher] says we should pray.” “I…have…prayed,” she said as fresh tears came.

The answer seemed simple to me.

“Mom, you have to tell God exactly what you want, then you’ll get what you ask for.”

“Sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

“My teacher said we would and she knows. So you’d better make a list and pray.”

She tried to smile as she pulled a stub of a pencil from her purse and sharpened it with a paring knife. On the back of a calendar she wrote our names and listed a toy for my two brothers. “Now what do you want?”

“New shoes,” I said. Even at that age, I was the practical kid in the family. “And I want black ones.”

“What if you get something else?”

“No, I’m going to get black ones.”

Our school principal wore black shoes with metal taps on the heels. When he walked down the hallway, I liked to listen to the clicking of the heels. I didn’t know anybody whose shoes shined so brightly. I wanted a pair the same color. “I’m going to ask for black and that’s what God will give me. Mrs. Garbie said so.”

The sole of my brown shoes had come loose on the right foot, and I finally cut it off. By the next day I had worn a hole through the inner sole and my socks as well. I stuck pieces of cardboard into the bottom, but they wore through too after walking in the wet snow.

I didn’t know much about praying, but I told God about the principal’s black shoes and that I wanted a pair like his. “They don’t have to be that nice. I just need shoes. And God, just to be sure you know, I want to tell you again, I want black.”

When Christmas morning came, we all gathered in the living room as soon as we finished our oatmeal. We didn’t have a tree, but Mom had hung red and green strips of crepe paper over the windows. Her eyes filled with tears, she handed my two younger brothers and me a small bag of candy. Mom began to sing “Silent Night.” When she was sad, she often sang hymns.

My dad didn’t say anything. He kept his head down while he tied and re-tied his shoes.

Just then a Salvation Army truck pulled up in front. My brother Mel ran to the door. He brought a fat, smiling man into our living room, who handed Dad three large boxes.

“We didn’t ask for help,” Mom said.

“Somebody told us,” he said. At the door, he smiled again and said, “Maybe it was God.”

“It was!” I yelled. “God told them!”

My brothers had fun pulling out boxes and trying to figure out who they were for. I waited for my shoes. Mel handed me a box of checkers, but I wasn’t much interested; I only wanted my shoes. Soon the boxes were empty. “Where are my shoes?”

“I guess there aren’t any,” Mom said.

“I asked for black shoes. Why didn’t I get them?” I couldn’t cry in front of my dad, so I stomped my foot.

“Sometimes God just doesn’t give us—”

“Maybe he took them to the wrong house.” Tears stung my eyes, but I wasn’t going to give in.

“Everything doesn’t work out the way we want,” Mom said and stroked my shoulder.

“God promised!” And as far as I was concerned, I had done what Mrs. Garbie told me and God hadn’t kept his promise. I had been so certain about the shoes, and now I didn’t know what to do. I’ll wait, I said. “Maybe the truck will come back soon.”

No matter how often I ran to the window and looked outside, the Salvation Army truck didn’t come back. No one else brought gifts.

Mom cooked Christmas dinner of chicken, cranberries, and sweet potatoes from the food they gave us. I didn’t want food; I just wanted my shoes. Every time I heard a car, I hurried to the window.

Finally, just before dark, I walked to the end of our snow-covered street to see my friend Chuck. Since I wasn’t going to get my shoes, I didn’t want to be home where I’d keep thinking about them.

Each year for Christmas, Chuck’s father bought rebuilt shoes for the family—shoes brought in for repair and never claimed. I went into their house and took off my shoes because my feet were cold and my right foot was soaking wet. I rubbed my toes to get them warm again.

“Look,” his mother said and pointed to my shoes.

“I didn’t mean to make a mess,” I said, embarrassed about my tracks on her linoleum floor.

They whispered something to each other, and Mrs. Baldwin went into another room. When she came out, she handed me a pair of shoes. “If you can wear them, they’re yours.”

I stared at them. They were black! Although rebuilt, they had been polished so nicely they looked new. I held them up to my face and smelled the polish. “They’ll fit all right!” Those were my shoes and I knew it.

“We got them for Chuck, but they’re too small,” she said, “and the man won’t take them back.” She said Chuck could wear his brother’s shoes from the previous year.

My left foot slid right in. I put a cold, wet right foot into the other. I tied the shoes, stood up, and walked around. They were a perfect fit, just as I knew they would be.

Minutes later I raced into our house. “Look, Mom! God gave me the shoes after all!”

Mom looked up and smiled. It was the brightest smile I’d seen on her face in months. Tears followed her smile.

I walked around the room to show off my shoes. “See, just what I asked for. And God even gave me the right color.”

I remembered that incident, and thirteen years later I needed shoes again. But I had long lost faith in the God of my childhood. However, in a search for meaning in my life, I had begun to attend church again. In the chapel, I asked God in awkward sentences for a pair of black shoes before Saturday.

On Friday when I came back from lunch, someone had put a brown bag on my desk. I opened it and inside I saw a pair of regulation black shoes.

I pulled them out and stroked the new leather. Someone had polished the tips to a bright glow. Several members of the personnel section where I worked beamed at me. Although I hadn’t said much, they knew about my lost pay records. One of them gave me a thumbs up.

I grabbed the shoes and hurried into the head (men’s room). I put on the shoes—just my size—and allowed the tears to form in my eyes.

I stared at the shoes’ reflection in the mirror and thought, twice God has provided shoes when I needed them. And not just any shoes, but black ones both times—just what I asked for.

From the gift of black shoes, I learned a valuable lesson. If I could trust God to provide for something simple like black shoes, I could trust God for anything I needed.

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This article appeared in a slightly different form in Christmas Miracles by Cecil Murphey and Marley Gibson (St. Martin’s Press, 2009). Used by permission.