Love Finds You in Frost Minnesota by Judy Baer

closet where the bedding, towels, shampoo, and other sundries were kept. Now he could only hope he hadn’t been overheard.
    “Gotta go, Vince. Call you tomorrow.” He went to the door, ready to apologize. Then he thought better of it. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. He hoped desperately that she hadn’t. She was a sweet woman. The last thing she needed was her guest bad-mouthing her dream, no matter how strongly he disagreed with it.
    * * * * *
    A silly woman who had turned the town into a mini Las Vegas of Christmas lights, gifts, and kitschy decorations, huh? Is that what she was? Merry tried her hardest not to stomp down the stairs to the kitchen. Peppy was lying on the floor by the door, looking innocent and in no hurry to get out. He rose slowly as she entered.
    “Peppy, were you just playing again? Every time you want me you can’t be ringing that bell! Only when you need to go out, okay?”
    The dog’s eyes were bright and intelligent, and he seemed to nod in agreement. Of course, that was in her imagination, and she knew very well that he’d do it again—and again. It was a game he played. Merry knew that she’d have to be the one to learn to discern between nature’s call and Peppy’s desire for human companionship.
    Merry sat down on a chair and buried her nose in the fur at the ruff of the dog’s neck. “Oh, Peppy, I just heard what Jack Frost really thinks of me.” It might have been better if she’d never heard, but it was done now and she had to decide what to do about it.
    At the moment, she was very tempted to “un-invite” Jack from her house. Then the same verse in the first book of Peter that so often inspired her now began to chastise her.
    “ Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
    God was big on hospitality.
    “Lord, help me with this!” she petitioned anxiously. “How am I supposed to be hospitable to someone I’d like to punch in the eye?”
    After a little conversation with God, Merry had calmed down enough to coax both Peppy and Nog up to her bedroom. She put on her softest pajamas, gathered her hair into a bundle that resembled a spouting whale, and secured the hair bundle with a band. Then she walked to her bookshelf and pulled out one of the old photo albums from her childhood.
    Her mother had been diligent about recording every moment of her only child’s life. Pictures were neatly ordered, giving a linear perspective of young Merry Noel’s existence. Days after her birth . . . learning to eat solid food and dispensing most of it on the top of her head . . . standing beside a Christmas tree decorated with red bows—it was all there. There was a photo of Christmas every year—only one. Sometimes Merry held a birthday cake as she stood there, giving a nod to the fact that Christmas was also her birthday.
    The only whimsical thing her parents had ever done, she’d decided long ago, was to name their daughter Merry Noel.
    The memories of her first years were good. Her parents always put forth the effort to make Christmas extra special. Sometimes there would be two birthday cakes—one for her and one for baby Jesus. It wasn’t until she was five or six that she began to realize that Christmas was celebrated very differently at the houses of her friends.
    Families came together. Cousins frolicked. Aunts and uncles chatted. Grandmothers cooked and served meals, and great-grandmothers smiled benevolently from their rocking chairs. Or, at least that was how Merry imagined it to be. Christmas was for families, a time to come together and celebrate the birth of the Lord.
    Each year her own Christmas, celebrated with only her mother and father, seemed smaller and lonelier. They tried hard to make it a special day, but Merry longed to be a part of one of those large families. As much as she loved her parents and all they did for her, Christmas came to connote two very different things in her young mind—the glorious birth of a Savior . . . and loneliness.
    When she