As we head into Christmas Week a lot of people are looking back over 2008, and thinking it's been a pretty tough year. Many have lost their jobs or homes. Others have battled health problems or family challenges. Or seen their dreams crumpled like so much tissue paper under the tree.

If you're looking for somebody to help you make sense of it all you might want to skip over the mainstream media. All you'll find there are a lot of people telling you how bad things are, how much worse they're going to get, how much you have to fear and who you ought to blame.

But there are other people out there who have some important things to say to us, especially now, at the end of a difficult year. They are heroes, of a sort, though they would never describe themselves that way. You won’t find them on the front page of your newspaper.  Or being interviewed on the radio.  You certainly won't see them profiled on the evening news. But they are there, speaking to us by what they do, not what they say.

One of them is a young mother who gathers Teddy Bears to give to children who must spend Christmas in the hospital. She knows how important it is for a child to have someone close by who can bring comfort and help allay all those nameless fears when mommy or daddy can't be there. She knows because she found out how important a Teddy Bear was to her own son when he was in the hospital, before he died of leukemia.

Another is a middle-aged woman who runs a ministry to inmates at the county jail. Her own children made some bad choices in life that caused a lot of pain. As a result she decided she wanted to help young women who needed a helping hand. She leads a Bible Study once a week for the inmates and helps organize support groups and mentoring programs that will assist them when they get out.

Then there is the former stockbroker. His life went haywire because of alcohol. Eventually it brought him to his knees but he was one of the lucky ones. He admitted he had a problem and entered recovery. Now, two decades later, he serves as the director of a mission for the homeless in the heart of downtown and he's never been happier. Life used to be about making money. Now it's about making a difference in other people's lives.

What do all these people have in common? They've all seen their lives go into a tailspin and been forced to walk through a valley of sadness, suffering and sorrow before coming out on the other side. Adversity did its best to destroy them but each of them looked it square in the eye and said "Move Over, I'm Coming Through." And that's what they did, not on their own, but with the help of God.

"I wanted a perfect ending," said Gilda Radner, after learning that she was seriously ill. "Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next."

None of us know what is going to happen next. All we know is that we have today. I hope, especially during this Christmas Week, that I'll remember this. I hope I'll remember to hug a lot more and find fault a lot less. To tell the people I love that I love them and tell the critical chorus in my head to go into the corner and keep its mouth shut. I hope I'll savor today and not worry about tomorrow. That I'll quit sweating the little things and instead take time to go do some little thing to bless somebody else. Because you know it really is the little things that mean so very, very much.

May you savor the little things, and our big God, throughout this coming week.

As the years go by it gets harder and harder to find a safe place to hide the Christmas gifts. You'd think with our house it would be a cinch. It's old, with lots of nooks and crannies. What's the problem? The problem is I live with the two nosiest people in the world.  My husband and son can locate a Christmas gift faster than a teenager can log on to Twitter. I'm beginning to wonder if I've got any hiding places left.

 I used to be able to hide presents under the bed. I could fit everything under there -- ski sweaters, X-boxes, sleeping bags, even a guitar. I stuffed them into pillow cases and no one ever knew. But everything got ruined the year I left Jiminy Cricket's leg hanging out of its bag. Our son discovered it and that took care of that.

For the next few years I used the den closet. It had lots of room for the big stuff since it had a shelf at the back, behind the hanging clothes. Then my husband went hunting for his gym shoes one day after Thanksgiving and found the VCR I'd bought for the den. It's probably just as well. I need the space anyway for all our other stuff, like the tennis racquets, Someday Box (you know, "Someday I'm going to make a hooked rug out of all these scraps") and the letterman's jacket my husband won't let me throw away.

The cubbyhole closet upstairs was a great place for several years. Nobody went there so I could hide almost anything. Then a Furbie went nuts one year, probably from the heat since it's located next to the fireplace, and he wouldn't shut up until our son tracked him down. Ever since then that's the first place he looks.

The guys have already discovered the broom closet and the trunk of my car. They even found the DVD of Gladiator I hid in the meat drawer of the fridge. This year they're following me everywhere I go. I'm starting to feel like a drug dealer with the FBI on my heels.

 Yeah, the washing machine. Now I know I'm safe, at least for another year.