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My whole family, this year, decided not to buy each other any Christmas gifts. Now, don’t get all worked up, the children all got gifts, and of course our spouses did. And granny. But it stopped there.
Instead, we reached out and were told of a family, with a single mother - veteran’s widow, who had four children, from 2yo to 13yo. They had made wish lists, and my family teamed up to conquer them.
The presents just left our house to be delivered, filling a 5x8 trailer, and hopefully bringing a load of joy with it. We’re doing it anonymously, I know, I know, they’re bound to find out it was us given that I’m posting to almost 500 followers most of whom I’m pretty sure are nastybots. It will be ok.
You see, I’m not posting this story to brag about how awesome my family is for doing this(although my family is pretty amazing), I think when it started, it seemed like an incredible thing that we were about to do. But it’s funny, somewhere along the way, I began to feel so grateful to be blessed to be able to do this simple thing for someone I’ll never know. A thing that we all take for granted.
My family is not wealthy. We don’t shower each other with the latest technologies or fancy trinkets, but we do well enough to give each other some things that will mean something.
This year, we spent more money combined on this family than we would have spent on one another. By far. These kids who’ve lost their dad, are expecting very little…. I wish we could watch them open all the gifts. Imagining that made the whole thing so incredibly worthwhile. The gratefulness grew into humbleness, which grew into such great peace.
We will likely never meet this family. Even if we do, we won’t know who we’ve met. We know their names. We know their Christmas wishlist, and that’s it. Not where they live, and not what they look like. We can only imagine and hope that they receive the gifts with the love that we sent with them.
Now we look ahead with Christmas so near, and there’s not a shred of sadness that we won’t be getting a single gift.
Because our hearts are with this family who need them more. And that was the real gift to us. To be the ones who were lucky enough to get their lists.
This is what Christmas is about. Giving to others with true love, without expecting a single thing in return.
This is what Jesus is about.
Feeling very thankful today.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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