Don't Miss the Blessing

Today, I have been blessed to be a part of God's handiwork here on earth. I love it when I see things from a different perspective after the fact. A lot of times, the perspective changes for the better. I'm glad today was one of those times.

As part of my church, my family belongs to a "Life Group". A life group is, at it's basic, a group of families that come together and "do life". We spend time in studying the bible together, we spend time having meals together, our children play together. We get to know one another on a deeper level than the passing "Hello" in church. As a way to bless others this Christmas season, we as a group "adopted" a local family, a family in need this Christmas. We spent time shopping for the presents together, as well as spending another night together wrapping and sharing cookies.

I must confess here that I did not enjoy the process of shopping and wrapping. Usually I am the first one in line to shop for others, willing to take it for the team, willing to spend hours wrapping and singing. However, the night we went shopping I had to have all of my children with me in the mall (mothers - thank you for that collective groan I just heard). The boys are not shoppers by nature, so of course spent much of the night running in and out of the racks. I was tense and on edge much of the evening. Also during this timeframe, I was on prednisone for unexplained nasal swelling that had stayed with me for 3 months. So I had sleep deprivation, as well as irritability, from being on that. The night was long and chaotic. Then the following week, we as a group wrapped all of the bounty we had collected from the week before. There was nothing there that made the night unenjoyable, but it was one of those nights where I had to drop one kid off here, another off there, run to this house and wrap, run back and pick up one child while my husband left early to pick up the other child. It was just easier to stay home.

Getting ready to deliver the presents, I realized that I was one of two of us that is home during the day, therefore having the flexibility to be able to deliver at the family's request. I was dreading it. I am a behind-the-scenes kind of person - I'll shop, wrap, bake, run around, but I would rather not be the main player. However, I saw no way out of this. And do you know, I almost robbed myself of this blessing because I had such a negative attitude. I didn't want to see the people whom we were blessing, because what if they were ungrateful? What if they hmppphed a Thanks and sent us out the door? Or what if I went into their home and found more things, newer electronics, better this or that, than my own home? Would I still want to give in the nature it was intended?

We took two vans of presents to this house. We pulled into the parking lot, and Mrs. was at the door ready to greet us. She came out, sans a coat, and helped us carry the packages into her home. Mr. was at the upstairs window, with it wide open in this 15 degree weather, watching. He is disabled in some form, and therefore could not come and help. We made several trips back and forth from van to home. At one point, after putting the gifts down on the floor, I came eye to eye with a picture on the coffee table. It was of one of the three children from that household. The face was familiar to me. As I stood, I turned and looked at the pictures she had hung on the wall of all of her children. There he was, the one that was familiar, at various ages. My eyes felt the sting of tears as I realized that her baby, and my oldest, went to elementary together. I couldn't remember which grade they spent together, but knew he was from one of the early years. I remembered that boy - not a lot, but enough to think of him as quiet and polite. I remembered enough to see his little face, framed in glasses, in the classroom. I thought of the innocence of those years, the wonderment that this time of year must have brought to him, as it does to every small child. Does he still feel it? Will he again because God's hand has touched their lives?

That's what I now see. Our group didn't buy those gifts, wrap them, and deliver them to make us feel good about blessing others. Who am I to judge what they need and don't need? Why should I care what they have and don't have, or what they say to me or don't say? God has blessed them through us - we were merely the ones doing the work. Those children may never know who we are, and that's OK. We were the carriers that took God's love to their doorstep. We were the ones to deliver the gifts, with God's message coming back to us from that open upstairs window - "Thank you and Merry Christmas to you". I locked eyes with Mr., smiled, and knew that I was the one that had just been blessed.