A Simple Christmas Part 5

I would have loved for my dad to spend at least one night in the Governor's Mansion, because it would have been such a treat for him. That Christmas, our family gathered at the Governor's Mansion to celebrate. We were all there-my sister and her family; our kids; my mother. Only my dad didn't make it, but we left an empty chair at the table in his honor.

On the day I was sworn in, one of my longtime friends from Hope said, "Mike, I sure wish your dad could have been here to see this."

I said, "I believe he did see it. And I think he saw it from the best seat in the house."

I now can laugh when I think about my dad's warning of his imminent demise each year at Christmas. In fact, I laugh at a lot of things when I remember him. But when I think of the Christmas that really was his last, I don't laugh, but I don't cry either. I smile in grat.i.tude not only for a father who gave me life and did everything he could to teach me how to live but also for all he did to teach me how to die. It's easy to leave behind a legacy when you're a governor or when you're famous and everyone knows who you are. But my dad was a simple man, and he left a legacy behind him through his faith, hope, and compa.s.sion that I will hold with me for the rest of my life. And even on his last Christmas, he was able to see the joy and happiness that G.o.d had blessed him with. He made it a great Christmas. A simple Christmas.

Rewards.

July 15, 1996, was like Christmas in July in a very real way. On that day, I was sworn in as the forty-fourth governor of Arkansas after having served as lieutenant governor for three years. I had been elected to serve under the Democrat governor Jim Guy Tucker in 1993 and reelected in 1994 for a four-year term that I didn't get to finish. In late May, Governor Tucker had been convicted of felonies related to the Whitewater scandal and had agreed to step down from his office on July 15. Just minutes before I was supposed to be sworn in, Tucker called me to say he had changed his mind and did not plan to step down after all. This was after seven weeks of transition during which I had prepared to a.s.sume the governors.h.i.+p and the state had scrambled to facilitate the changeover. To top it off, the Capitol was overflowing with people who had poured in from around the state to watch the swearing in of the new Republican governor. All h.e.l.l broke loose. For almost five tumultuous hours, there were two men-one Democrat and one Republican-claiming to be governor. To make matters worse, the state police and the National Guard were rendered useless because they weren't sure who their boss was. The Democrats controlled the House 89-11 and the Senate 31-4, and yet even they realized that Tucker's actions could sink their party, as the anger and outrage that had started in the Capitol had begun to spread throughout the entire state. Tucker finally relented, resigned unconditionally, and I was sworn in at 7:00 P.M.

As much as I lament the fact that I didn't a.s.sume power in a normal, peaceful, and celebratory way, the event was a blessing for me. First, my unlikely and sometimes awkward political journey had taken me to the governor's office, and second, the misconduct of my predecessor meant that the very Democrats who dominated the state were willing to give me-the third Republican governor of Arkansas in more than a hundred years-a fair chance.

Of course, just as the joy and excitement of Christmas morning eventually give way to the challenge of cleaning up the mess you just left under the tree, my celebrations upon a.s.suming office were short-lived. After the first few days of adulation and adoration from the good people of Arkansas, the reality of the job took hold. Being governor is hard work, and it's not a five-day-a-week, nine-to-five job. You have to be on duty 24-7 because a tornado, a prison escape, or the death of a thirteen-year-old boy being held in state custody doesn't always happen during banking hours. But even though it's demanding and challenging, being governor is absolutely the best job imaginable if you are truly interested in changing things and having an impact on society, which is exactly what I wanted to do.

And of course, despite all the hard work, being governor does have its perks, the best being the accommodations. The Governor's Mansion is unlike any other home. Living in it is like living in a very nice bed-and-breakfast where you never have to check out. You are surrounded by people twenty-four hours a day, and there's never a moment when you're completely alone. State police and security detail guard your home at all hours of the day and night. Cameras watch every inch of the property within the gates. If you leave your bedroom in the middle of the night, you always have to make sure you're dressed because there's always a chance you will b.u.mp into someone-even at 3:00 A.M.-whether it's a staffer or a group of several hundred people attending an event. But despite the lack of privacy there, the governor's mansion offers every possible convenience. The staff is charged with the task of attending to ch.o.r.es and errands so that the governor and his family can go about their business without the ha.s.sle of doing laundry, shopping for groceries, or ironing. I had spent my entire life worrying about money and working hard just to get by. I'd even had to sell my prized guitars just to buy a washer and dryer. Never in my life had I imagined that I'd ever have someone who was hired to do all of my laundry for me!

Even Christmas was an official affair. During the holiday season, the Governor's Mansion serves as the center of activity for the state and plays host to an almost nightly schedule of events, parties, and tours from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. It's difficult to separate a private "family Christmas" from the public "citizens' Christmas," and after the first year, my family and I gave up on having a separate "family tree" in the upstairs area where the bedrooms were and instead used one of the several trees that adorned the public s.p.a.ces downstairs.

Since the earliest days of our marriage, Janet had collected manger scenes that she used to decorate the house. Her favorite was a very large one made of olive wood that we had purchased on one of our many trips to Israel, and during Christmas in the Governor's Mansion, we placed this on a large table in the conference room. She made it her tradition in the mansion to display all of these manger scenes each year. She considered it her way to add a personal touch on the otherwise "official" Christmas decorating process.

Every year, a wonderful group of women volunteers from around the state came to help decorate. They gave several days of their time and much of their care and love to helping make the Governor's Mansion a special and beautiful place at Christmas. No matter how many times I saw the tastefully and carefully planned decorations, I was still in awe of their simple yet stunning beauty.

My entire life, I had searched for the perfect home-first as a newlywed, then as a new father-but during my time as governor, I realized that home is about more than just four walls and a roof. It's about family. Even though I was living in the Governor's Mansion, it was never my house. I didn't own it, and I knew that one day I would be forced to move out. I spent a decade sitting on furniture I didn't own, dining off dishes that weren't mine, and eating food I hadn't purchased or cooked. But my wife and three kids made it feel like home, especially at Christmas.

My family spent more years and celebrated more Christmases in the Governor's Mansion than in any other residence we'd lived in for thirty-five years. Each year was special and marked by a beauty and comfort we hadn't experienced before. That ended with my last Christmas as governor.

My ten-and-a-half-year term came to an end in January 2007, and so the Christmas of 2006-complete with the traditional staff, cabinet, and state agency holiday events-was much more nostalgic and emotional than any before. The pace and pressure of my term had certainly taken its toll on my team, and photos from the last few months of my term reveal just how much we had weathered. We all certainly felt a genuine mood of satisfaction and fulfillment for all we had accomplished over the past decade, but the sense of finality was marked by deep sadness among our staff.

While my family, my staff, and I tried to soak in each moment and savor the memories, we were also faced with a looming deadline to vacate the capitol and the Governor's Mansion. We had determined back in 1996, at the very beginning of my term, that we would do everything we could to make sure this transition was as smooth as possible. I had a.s.sumed office in the midst of chaos and confusion, and I had promised myself that I wouldn't force my successor to deal with the same thing.

When I walked into my office on my first night as governor, I was shocked and appalled by the mess waiting for me. The previous administration had left no files, records, or even phone books behind, and the only thing that remained was a half-full drawer of papers for our legal counsel. There were no records of appointments, no budgetary records for any state office, and not even instructions on how to use the phones. We were able to get records of appointments from the secretary of state and budget information from the finance and administration department, but for everything else we had to start from scratch. It was a petty thing to do, and it meant that I had to spend a good chunk of my early days in office just trying to get organized, when I should've been running the state. I wouldn't let the next guy suffer through that.

But despite my attempts to facilitate a smooth handover, certain journalists and opponents began to accuse me of destroying hard drives and office computers. In fact, I did have the hard drives from several of the computers removed and destroyed, but only after my staff and I had salvaged all records of transactions, budgets, appointments, and important correspondence that my successor might need. The procedure we followed was not only authorized and recommended by our department of information services but based on federal guidelines for information protection. In many cases, state-owned computers were sold to outside parties, and if files weren't sufficiently scrubbed, hackers could obtain sensitive information-even medical records and Social Security numbers-that, if dropped in the wrong hands, could lead to privacy violations or lawsuits against the state. We made sure all pertinent records and information got pa.s.sed to the new administration and even placed funds in our budget to help cover costs of the transition and vacated our offices earlier than required so the new guys could come in without a hiccup.

We did the same at the Governor's Mansion. Janet and I moved out two weeks early so as to give the new first family the opportunity to arrange the house to their liking before they moved in. Yet despite the herculean effort we put forth to make things easier, my staff and I were rewarded with a series of shoddily researched news articles and columns and even ethics complaints, all of which were baseless. So the peaceful, relaxing and reflective final Christmas we had hoped to spend in the Governor's Mansion was quite the opposite. And on top of the political drama, I still had to contend with some issues at home.

Janet had been experiencing pain in both of her knees for some time. The trouble was caused by a combination of old basketball injuries and the residual effects of her cancer surgery, which had led to neuropathy in her legs. Her doctor told her that her left knee needed to be replaced immediately and she would need to replace the right knee before too long, so Janet decided to have both operations at the same time-two days before Thanksgiving, just in time for the annual Christmas events and our preparations to move.

Having one knee replaced is tough, but getting both replaced on the same day is pretty much unbearable. If you ever find out that someone has given me double knee surgery, call the authorities and report medical malpractice because I a.s.sure you that I would never elect to have that done.

Janet was virtually incapacitated for the entire holiday season and during our move to a home we had purchased in North Little Rock, so I was pretty much left to do the packing on my own. We had acc.u.mulated a substantial amount of stuff over our thirty-two years of marriage, and much of what we had brought to the Governor's Mansion more than ten years earlier was still in unopened boxes. The way I looked at it, if we had lived without it for ten years, then we could live without it forever. I voted to get rid of those boxes without even opening them, but Janet had a different idea. I'm sure you know she won, and we ended up going through each and every box and taking most of them with us. Most of those are now in storage in our new home.

As we went through our stuff, we put things into four categories: throw away, give away, store away, or move away. I donated all of my official papers and memorabilia to my alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University, as I had agreed to do, but I gave away a large number of keepsakes from my tenure and various mementos that had acc.u.mulated through the years. (Most of these things-like photos of special events-went to my staff.) I decided, after much hesitation, to dispose of my rather extensive theological library, which I had started in high school and had grown to include several thousand books. I donated the entire library to the Chaplain's Ministry at the Arkansas Department of Corrections in the hope they might inspire some inmates to turn their lives around.

Everything else-besides the truckloads (literally) of stuff we threw away-came with us. In the weeks leading up to the move, I woke up almost every morning between 4:00 and 5:00 A.M. to take a Suburban full of boxes, which I had packed late the night before, over to our new house before returning to my office for a long day of more transitional work.

Oh, and in the middle of all this I was also in the process of trying to determine whether I was going to run for president of the United States, and I had a new book called From Hope to Higher Ground coming out the week I left office. Just a few things to keep me busy and occupied!

So just how simple was my Christmas? I had to take care of a wife rendered a complete invalid; tidy up after ten years as governor; move out of the Governor's Mansion and into a new home; launch a new book; and decide whether to run for president. Oh, and I still had to deal with all of the normal Christmas stuff-shopping, decorating, etc.-and the parade of state-run events. I was sure looking for some "peace on earth, goodwill toward men"!

But a couple of days before Christmas, it all hit me-in so many ways, my life was better than I could have ever imagined it. In my frazzled condition, I had forgotten that Christmas wasn't a time for me to become an irritable and impatient tyrant because I was stressed out and so many things were going wrong. It was the one time of the year that I needed to stop my motors and listen to the quiet and rea.s.suring voice of G.o.d reminding me that, no matter how crazy life got, I would always have the original Christmas gift-His love, salvation, and hope.

I paused to reflect on that first Christmas and what it all meant. G.o.d had wanted to send us a message, and He could've done it by shouting from the mountaintops or sending a flood or a burning bush our way. He could've had a party or a press conference or a parade. But He didn't. He sent a baby. A baby who would carry G.o.d's whole message in His very essence. A baby who cried and had to learn how to walk and talk and who had to grow up the way all of us do-one year at a time. There would come a time in that infant's life when throngs of thousands would line the streets to either cheer Him with shouts of "Hosanna!" or jeer Him with shouts of "Crucify him!" People would surround Him just to ask for a prayer or the chance to touch His garments. He would go on to change the world and the lives of millions forever. But He started as a baby.

G.o.d could have sent His son into this world fully grown and ready to start performing miracles. But it was the years of patient preparation that made the last part of the journey not only tolerable but in fact rewarding. Over the years, surely there were times when the young carpenter in Nazareth must have prayed, "Father, the world's a mess. Don't you think it's time I go forth and start my ministry?" At times, I'm sure He felt frustrated when the answer from above was, "No, I need you to make some more chairs. Maybe another table." Jesus, who knew that His real purpose on earth was to bring people to G.o.d by preaching great sermons, performing amazing miracles, recruiting disciples, and eventually giving his life on a Roman cross, was stuck building furniture for the first thirty years of his life. Seems like an awful waste of talent! But G.o.d knew that the preparation was more important than the presentation, and on that day just before Christmas in 1996, I began to realize that all spiritual pilgrimages are marathons, not sprints.

I have run four marathons, so I know what it's like not only to run one but also to train for one. Before I decided to train for my first one, I would never have deemed it possible that I could endure watching a marathon, let alone running one. For my first marathon, I trained for eight months. It was grueling and tedious work, but when the time came to actually run the marathon, I discovered that the hard part wasn't running that actual 26.2 miles in one stretch; it was preparing for it. In the end, my hard work had paid off.

Jesus didn't show up on earth running at full speed. He showed up as a helpless infant who had to be carried, fed, and held by someone else, just like every other baby. It took Him thirty years of preparation and virtual silence and solitude before He ever preached His first sermon or performed a miracle. But that waiting and training and patience prepared Him for the last three years of His life, during which He carried out G.o.d's mission on earth and received the greatest reward-and gave us the greatest gift-imaginable.

I started thinking about the amazing journey I had already had. I thought back through the many Christmases I had as a kid, when I would patiently wait all year for the big day and when it finally came, I would be thrilled just to get one gift I really wanted (even though I had looked at dozens of things in the Sears catalog). The only Christmas stress I had to endure was hurrying to rewrap the packages that my sister and I had broken into. I thought about trekking through the woods with my dad to find a little tree at my uncle's farm that we could chop down and bring home to decorate.

But here in 2006, things were a lot more stressful. But I realized that I needed to stop thinking about how much I was stressed and start thinking about how much I was blessed. I had married my high-school sweetheart and was still married to her after thirty-two years, a battle with cancer, and the birth of three kids, none of whom we were supposed to have. I was the governor of my state, even though my dad had always told me that I might never even meet a governor. I was in the process of trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff I had acc.u.mulated over the years, even though just a few decades earlier I had been able to fit everything I owned into the backseat of a car. My wife and I were in the process of moving again, but this time we were moving into a nice, large house of our own instead of the duplex we had lived in when we were first married. Janet was recovering from knee surgery, but she was alive-thirty-one years longer than we thought possible. I was trying to make a tough decision about my next career move, but that move might be a step toward becoming the next president of the United States.

Life might not seem so simple, but it was good! Very good. And I realized it was good because the slow and steady ramp I had climbed to get to where I was had given me perspective on what an amazing journey it had been.

Christmas started taking on its true meaning again. I decided that all the things that stressed me were really the unimportant things. The important thing at Christmas was the simple truth that G.o.d loves us. He loves us when we have nothing and loves us when we have a lot. This is a better gift than anything your family, your friends, or even Santa can bring you.

Over the next fifteen months, I would experience the ride of my life in my campaign for president. It was a tough and grueling process, but reporters often commented that I seemed to be enjoying it, and I was even dubbed the Happy Warrior by some columnists who noticed that I didn't appear to be overwhelmed by the pressures and rigors of the campaign.

I would always remind them that I considered myself the luckiest man in America. I knew where I came from, and yet here I was, running for president-where else but in this country could that be possible?

I think the Christmas of 2006 was a transformational event for me-after years of getting busier and taking on more responsibility than ever, I was able to recapture the original spirit of Christmas and was reminded that a great Christmas isn't the expensive one or the elaborate one. It's the simple one. The one in which we are reminded that G.o.d continues to choose to speak to us through the simple things that no amount of money can buy. It's what He tried to teach us. And if we listen, He's still saying it now. You might not hear it in the noise of a Christmas party or see it in the stunning, bright lights of Times Square, but you might just hear it slightly above the sounds of cows and sheep in a little grotto in Bethlehem. A baby cries. G.o.d is speaking. It's a simple message. But it's a saving message. So this year, I hope you have a warm Christmas, I hope you have a joyful Christmas, but most of all I hope you have a simple Christmas.

Acknowledgments.

Adrian Zackheim of Portfolio and Sentinel imprints contacted me about doing a Christmas book. When a Jewish publisher says he's interested in a politician's doing a book about Christmas, you just gotta listen!

Like my previous (and hopefully future projects) with Portfolio and Sentinel, this has been a sheer delight. The entire publis.h.i.+ng team, and especially project coordinator and editor Brooke Carey, have been rugged taskmasters to keep me on their ridiculously tight deadlines, but they did it with a spirit that makes me want to sing "Joy to the World" in July. Okay, maybe it wasn't that lovely, but they really are not only the very best in professionalism, but also truly fun to work with. Their suggestions to make the book better were always helpful, yet they never attempted to change my thoughts or my words. After you read it, maybe you will have wished they had!

Frank Breeden and Duane Ward of Premiere Authors are the best I know in not only handling all the logistics of getting me lined up with the publisher, but also in putting together the best promotional plan possible to make it a worthy endeavor for the author, the publisher, the bookstores, and outlets.

The Sentinel and Premiere publicity teams-Will Weisser, Allison McLean, Christy D'Agostini, Laura Clark, Josh Smallbone, and Joel Smallbone-really helped promote this book. Three weeks on a bus is a long time, but they made it as comfortable and as smooth as possible. And the bus crew at Premiere who outfitted the bus with a little studio so I could do my radio commentaries for the ABC Radio Network while on the road.

And most of all for the most important person in the entire process, you the reader. I hope you enjoy the book. If you have half the fun reading it as I did remembering and reliving the stories behind it, then it will have been a great success.

And it just seems appropriate to say, "Merry Christmas!"

ALSO BY MIKE HUCKABEE.

Do the Right Thing.

Character Makes a Difference.

From Hope to Higher Ground.

Quit Dig ging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork.