The Gift Of The Magi: Bedtime Story & Meditation

Fall into a deep sleep with tonight's reading of The Gift of the Magi.

Accompanied by a guided sleep meditation,

The story will be told as a reminder of what it is like to truly love and to truly give.

As you listen,

May you feel your heart warming and opening as you visualize silvery strands like angel hair that connect you to all the people that you love most.

Deep love and connections are fostered not just by the good times.

The true growth and depths form from the times of vulnerability,

Of selflessness,

Of loyalty,

And of truly wanting to make someone happy.

Tonight is your time to make yourself happy and to connect to the spirit of giving and generosity and love that you are capable of.

It is our greatest superpower.

Love can heal along with the creative powers of our imagination.

So let this be your time to imagine and feel good,

To feel safe and cared for,

To know that you very much deserve this time in the sanctuary of your own mind.

It's time to dream away.

I would like to welcome you to Michelle's sanctuary.

I am Michelle and as you are listening,

Remember that I am here just for you.

You may think of my voice as that of your strongest ally and friend.

I am here to remind you that we are all connected and even when physically distanced,

We can stay spiritually connected.

I hope as you hear this story that you float across the calming bridge to your sleeping life and uncover dreams of those you love that you reconnect with your best memories and hopeful visions of all you wish for your future.

Take in a deep breath and let your body become like an inflatable raft,

Floating across a warm channel of water towards deep relaxation.

And then sigh it all out.

Let go and inhale again and yawn like when you were a sleepy child in warm pajamas.

You can now yawn without guilt and then audibly and contentedly exhale and sigh.

Get cozy and cuddle up as this story is about to begin.

The Gift of the Magi by O.

Henry.

$1.

87,

That was all,

And 60 cents of it was in pennies.

Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with a silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.

Three times Della counted it.

$1.

87 and the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

So Della did it,

Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs,

Sniffles,

And smiles,

With sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second,

Take a look at the home,

A furnished flat at $8 per week.

It did not exactly beggar description,

But it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicensity squad.

In the vest you will below was a letter box into which no letter would go and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.

Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name Mr.

James Dillingham Young.

The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week.

Now when the income was shrunk to $20 though,

They were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D.

But whenever Mr.

James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called Jim and greatly hugged by Mrs.

James Dillingham.

Young already introduced to you as Della,

Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with a powder rag.

She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Day and she had only a dollar and eighty-seven cents with which to buy Jim a present.

She had been saving every penny she could for months with this result.

$20 a week doesn't go far.

Expenses had been greater than she had calculated.

They always are.

Only one dollar and eighty-seven cents to buy a present for Jim.

Her Jim.

Only a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.

Something fine and rare and sterling.

Something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There is a pure glass between the windows of the room.

Perhaps you have seen a pure glass in an eight dollar flat.

A very thin and very agile may,

By observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.

Della being slender had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass.

Her eyes were shining brilliantly,

But her face had lost its color within twenty seconds.

Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride.

One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's.

The other was Della's hair.

Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft,

Della would have let her hair hang out the window someday to dry just to depreciate her majesty's jewels and gifts.

Had King Solomon been the janitor,

With all his treasures piled up in the basement,

Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.

It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.

And then she did it up again,

Nervously and quickly.

Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown hat.

With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes,

She fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

There she stopped,

The sign read,

Madam Sophrony,

Hair goods of all kinds.

One flight up,

Della ran and collected herself panting.

Madam,

Large,

Too white,

Chilly,

Hardly looked the Sophrony.

Will you buy my hair?

Asked Della.

I buy hair,

Said Madam.

Take your hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it.

Down rippled the brown cascade.

Twenty dollars,

Said Madam,

Lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

Give it to me quick,

Said Della.

Oh,

In the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.

Forget the hashed metaphor.

She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last.

It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.

There was no other like it in any of the stores and she had turned all of them inside out.

It was a platinum fob chain,

Simple and chaste in design,

Properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation as all good things should do.

It was even worthy of the watch.

As soon as she saw it,

She knew that it must be Jim's.

It was like him.

Quietness and value.

The description applied to both.

Twenty one dollars they took from her for it and she hurried home with the eighty seven cents.

With that chain on his watch,

Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.

Grand as the watch was,

He sometimes looked at it on the sly.

An account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home,

Her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason.

She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love.

Which is always a tremendous task dear friends.

A mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny close lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror long,

Carefully and critically.

If Jim doesn't kill me,

She said to herself,

Before he takes a second look at me,

He'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.

But what could I do?

What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?

At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove,

Hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late.

Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered.

Then she heard his step on the stair,

Away down on the first flight,

And she turned white for just a moment.

She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things and now she whispered.

Please,

God,

Make him think that I am still pretty.

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it.

He looked thin and very serious.

Poor fellow,

He was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family.

He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter by the scent of quail.

His eyes were fixed upon Della and there was an expression in them that she could not read and it terrified her.

It was not anger,

Nor surprise,

Nor disapproval,

Nor horror,

Nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for.

He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

Jim,

Darling,

She cried,

Don't look at me this way.

I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present.

It will grow out again.

You won't mind,

Will you?

I just had to do it.

My hair grows awfully fast.

Say Merry Christmas,

Jim,

And let's be happy.

You don't know what a nice,

What a beautiful nice gift I've got for you.

You've cut your hair,

Asked Jim laboriously,

As if he had not arrived at that patent fact,

Yet even after the hardest mental labor.

Cut it off and sold it,

Said Della.

Don't you like me just as well anyhow?

I'm me without my hair,

Ain't I?

Jim looked about the room curiously.

You say your hair is gone,

He said,

With an air almost of idiocy.

You needn't look for it,

Said Della.

It's sold,

I tell you,

Sold and gone too.

It's Christmas Eve,

Boy,

Be good to me,

For it went for you.

Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered.

She went on with sudden,

Serious sweetness.

Nobody could ever count my love for you.

Shall I put the chops on,

Jim?

Out of his trance,

Jim seemed quickly to wake.

He enfolded his Della.

For ten seconds,

Let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction.

Eight dollars a week or a million a year,

What's the difference?

A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.

The magi brought valuable gifts,

But that was not among them.

This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

Don't make any mistake,

Della,

He said.

About me,

I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less.

But if you'll unwrap that package,

You may see why you had me going for a while at first.

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper,

And then an ecstatic scream of joy and then,

Alas,

A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails,

Necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the Lord of the Flat.

For there lay the combs,

The set of combs side and back.

Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window.

Beautiful combs,

Pure tortoiseshell with jeweled rims,

Just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.

They were expensive combs she knew,

And her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.

And now they were hers,

But the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried,

Oh,

Oh.

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present.

She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm.

The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

Isn't it a dandy,

Jim?

I hunted all over town to find it.

You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now.

Give me your watch.

I want to see how it looks on it.

Instead of obeying,

Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

Del said he,

Let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while.

They're too nice to use just a present.

I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.

And now suppose you put the chops on.

The Magi,

As you know,

Were wise men.

Wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the babe in the manger.

They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

Being wise,

Their gifts were no doubt wise ones,

Possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.

But in a last word to the wise of these days,

Let it be said that of all who give gifts,

These two were the wisest.

Of all who give and receive gifts,

Such as they are wisest.

Everywhere they are wisest.

They are the Magi.

And may the gifts of the Magi and the gifts of the heart continue to illuminate your journey and path.

May love find you and may you realize what is permanent is what holds the most value and it is often unseen.

May you keep your heart open to all of love's giving.

I am going to count you down to a night of healing sleep where you may receive the gifts of your subconscious in the best of dreams.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Finding peace.

Finding stillness.

Finding sleep.

It's time to dream away.

Good night.

Good night.