Melly's Tree.When grandbabies have birthdays, you show up if at all possible.

Since Melanie lives in Lenoir, North Carolina -- less than a three-hour drive from Columbia -- and she was all set to turn five on December 21st, last weekend the family converged on daughter Stephanie's house to properly fete the little darling.

Daughter Audrey drove to Stephanie's from Knoxville on Thursday after work. Daughter Erica and I planned to set out on Friday at noon, after she worked a half day.

TG would meet us there, as he was working in Hickory. Andrew was still on duty at Offutt AFB in Omaha; his travel plans would land him in Columbia late on Saturday and sadly he wouldn't be with us this time.

But on Thursday night, everything changed.

That's when, thanks to Weather dot com, we learned that most of Western North Carolina was under a winter storm warning and expecting many inches of snow.

The snow was due to arrive on Friday at lunchtime. If Erica and I departed Columbia at noon as planned, we would drive into the teeth of the storm.

Not good.

Allissa Observes.

Instead, we sortied at nine thirty Thursday night and, after running a few errands both here and there, arrived on Stephanie's doorstep at one o'clock in the morning.

Snowflakes began their graceful descent as we were chatting over coffee seven hours later.

The snow sheeted down until nearly eleven o'clock that night. Late in the day, millions of tinkling ice crystals began pummeling the pristine landscape.

Nine inches of the sparkling white fantasy material would accumulate before it was over.

That may be a mere dusting to folks who reside above the sweet tea line, but in the Carolinas, it's a blizzard.

TG blew in just after lunch, as main arteries transformed into anxious parking lots and secondary routes became heartstopping public luges.

There was happy news: Andrew was even then in the air, bound for Atlanta, where he would catch a flight to Charlotte in hopes of joining us. Having finished up at Offutt early on Friday, avuncular devotion -- and a fondness for birthday cake -- had motivated last-minute changes in his travel plans.

Snowbound Sisters.

Except, even before he landed in Atlanta, his connecting flight to Charlotte was canceled.

He was aggravated and disappointed until his girlfriend, Nicole -- at home with her parents in Hoschton, Georgia -- offered to fetch him. She and her mother braved a mad snarl of rain-stormy Christmas Friday traffic to save Andrew from spending the night on a bench (or the floor) at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Meanwhile, in Lenoir, we watched Christmas movies on television when we weren't watching our own white Christmas beyond the windowpanes. We baked a birthday cake, and enjoyed the grandbabies, and took lots of pictures, and were grateful for heat and light and plenty of delicious food.

TG Sweepstakes.

Son-in-law Joel, pastor of the Temple Baptist Church in Lenoir, made a visit that morning to the home of a man who had none of those things. He treated the unfortunate gentleman to a hot meal at a restaurant just before the icy, snowy roads turned treacherous.

Not everyone will spend Christmas in a warm, fragrant house, surrounded by loving family members and twinkling lights and gifts and music and laughter and feasting.

Not everyone will spend Christmas privileged with the full knowledge of its meaning, and with the security of knowing the Savior of Whom all the carols sing.

Birthday Girl.

Some families -- maybe even ours -- will spend Christmas Day huddled in silent anguish around hospital beds, or in desperate grief beside coffins.

Some people will despair of life during this beautiful season.

God help us to see them, and to pray for them, and to help them when we can.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17)

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up freely for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

Merry Christmas!