On December 13, at 8:30 pm, there was a knock on my door. I
was not expecting anyone and was already in my pajamas and my warm little lamb
socks. I was sure I wasn’t going to answer it. I stood in the hallway and
yelled, “Who is it?” No answer. The nerves kicked in. I called out again, “Whoooooo
iiiiiiis iiiiiiit?” Still no answer. I went to the front of the house to look
out the window. Make note that I went to the far side corner of the window, crouched down beneath the window and barely peeked up enough to peer
right over the sill through the curtain. (You can roll your eyes here and insert your comment of, "Get a grip Lauren. No one is trying to get you. And also you are the worst spy I've ever seen.")
I saw no one out the window, no cars, no neighbors, nothing.
Bigger nerves hit, but don’t worry, I decided to calm those nerves with my Sig 229
.40 caliber. I finally inched my way to the door and opened it slowly. (Because
clearly the robber would be alarmed if I opened the door slowly. Obvi.)
There on my porch, was a big opened box with what looked
like lots of presents inside. (My immediate thought was, “Is this a ruse? Is
there a man waiting behind the house to get me when I come out? Or is there a
bomb in that box? Evidently, I’ve watched too many Criminal Mind episodes.) I slowly opened the screen door and walked
cautiously closer to it. Yes, there were gifts, lots of them. They were all neatly wrapped
and in a cardboard box sitting on my porch. I went a little further out trying
to see if there was anyone leaving my street. Nope. No one. Hmmmm. Okay.
I took this huge box inside and checked out the gifts more
closely. Each wrapped gift had an envelope taped to it and each envelope was numbered,
“Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc.” There was also a note that said, “OPEN ME FIRST”. I
complied. That first note said that these presents were to be opened each day
in order, one per day until Christmas Eve.
WHAT? Who in the world would do this for us? Seriously, who
went to all this trouble? I had no idea. I called my parents of course to check
with them. My mom said, “Nope. I didn’t do that.” At first I assumed she was
lying in order to protect her identity in this fun little endeavor, but after a
few minutes of her convincing argument, I
finally believed she wasn’t the culprit.
But…then who? Only a relative would spend this kind of time and money on
doing something this special…right?
Wes and I began with the gifts that evening. Then with each
bedtime that followed Wes would say, “MOM! THE GIFTS! Let’s see what the next
number is and open it!” I cannot tell you how much Wes and I anticipated the
surprises each evening. Of course Wes loved every bit of it, but even as an
adult…IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!
The gifts were all different, some for family movie nights,
some for music in the car, some for home décor. The list goes on and on. With
the final gift and note on Day 12, the Secret Santa was revealed.
Wow! All these gifts. All that time. THIS FAMILY! You need
to know that this family has 2 kids of their own, both parents work and yet, they took
time to write 12 letters, wrap 12 gifts and then deliver them to our home so that
our Christmas season would have an added richness to it. And indeed these
thoughtful gifts gave us just that.
In fact, a while back I wrote a blog about Christmas
gifts from God and this year, THIS
FAMILY was our Christmas gift from the Lord.
You know who you are and we thank you so much! You gave us
so much more than what you realize. We love you!
Wes and I will be passing this gift on to someone else! We should all plan to give this to a family next year.
What a GIFT!
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