Merry Christmas!

[AGDee]

I don't think I ever shared this story with the board.. it's my own personal Christmas Angel story.

It was Christmas season, 2001. This was the year that I was extremely sick from the Crohn's but didn't yet have a diagnosis. I had lost 65 pounds in 5 months and was subsisting on a few staples: red jello, scrambled eggs, Gatorade, applesauce and popsicles. I was in enormous amounts of pain. I had just bought my house that summer which was a real financial strain for me at that time. I had orthostatic hypotension; every time I stood up a black curtain would start to come over me and I had to hold on to something until it passed. I carried my health insurance card in my pocket, afraid I was going to pass out at any time. My hands shook. I was in a lot of pain almost all the time. I was somehow managing to work full time and care for my kids, who were 5 and 7 at the time. I was, quite plainly, completely exhausted, all the time. I didn't know what was wrong me, and wasn't quite sure whether I was even going to survive this illness that I had.

We stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things one day after work and my funds were extremely tight. My kids saw the Hallmark kissy bears hanging from a display and asked if we could get them. I mentally tallied up the cost of the groceries we needed and knew that I couldn't afford them and told them "no". Nathan said "But Momma, they are free!" because the sign above them said that they were free IF you bought 3 cards. I pointed that out to him and told him we didn't need any cards so they wouldn't be free for us. I barely noticed the woman who was looking at cards throughout this exchange. We continued with our shopping and headed to the car about 30 minutes later.

As I was loading the groceries into the car, the woman who had been looking at the cards came up to me and handed me a bag. Inside that bag were the Hallmark kissy bears. With tears in my eyes, I was speechless, but managed to eek out a "Thank You So Much". I got in the car and handed the bag to the kids. They asked "Where did you get these?" and I told them "Our Christmas Angel gave them to us" and I started to sob. My daughter said "That was a very nice thing, why are you crying?" I told her they were tears of joy. (And I am crying now, again, as I recount this.. as I have EVERY SINGLE TIME that I recount this).

That woman will never have any idea just what those bears meant to us, to ME, that Christmas. She had no way of knowing how sick I was. I'm sure I probably just looked like a harried, tired, single mom who was watching her pennies. She will never know just how much that simple act meant, but I wish she could know. I hope that her kindness has come back to her a thousand fold.

She was Jesus, she was Santa Claus, she was hope and kindness and everything good in the world and she changed my life and the lives of my children in a way that we can never re-pay.