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Every Day is Precious: Giving spirit provides Christmas to remember
By ROB PAYNE
For Williamson A.M.
Our family has just finished one of our best Christmases ever. For me, the best Christmas was the one I proposed to Marcy. I don't know if there will ever be a better one than that, but this one comes close. We received so much from family, friends and strangers.
A friend submitted our situation to the Glenn Beck radio talk show's Christmas Wish initiative. The show and the Home Shopping Network teamed up to bring a boatload of gifts for the family. On the bow of the boat was a Gateway computer.
The Middle Tennessee chapter of the ALS Association recommended our family for adoption by the Dayani Health Promotion Center. An army of total strangers shopped for, bought and wrapped clothes, toys, gift certificates and other generous presents for us.
Our Sunday school class at ClearView Baptist Church collected money and bought all the specific items on the kids' lists. For the four weeks leading up to Christmas, our 9-year-old daughter watched TV with a pad of paper so she could add items to her list as she saw the commercial. To be fair to her, the first item listed was for ''Mommy to walk again,'' but there was an impressive list of toys following.
Marcy spends a lot of time in bed wearing gowns we've picked up from our various hospital tours. A few people from the Sunday school class got together and made some hospital gowns with cheerful, colorful patterns of holidays, flowers and animals. The Sunday school class also spent a good portion of their class Christmas party piling into a car, driving to our house and caroling outside our front door in the rain.
We received many more cards than normal. Some from people we know, but many from strangers. Most included a check along with their best wishes. We also received anonymous gifts, including four tickets to the ice sculpture display at the Opryland Hotel. And sometime in the middle of the night Christmas Eve, someone left more gifts on our doorstep.
Many of the packages from strangers were wrapped with no indication of the intended recipient or what was in them. We thought about opening them ahead of time to see what was inside, then re-wrapping with the appropriate tag. Instead, we sat the kids down Christmas morning and explained that many of our gifts are unmarked because they are from strangers who don't even know our names. All these gifts came from a supernatural love that only comes from God, especially this time of year when we celebrate the birth of his Son. This is the real Santa Claus.
I believe there are rainy days in our lives so we know how great the sunny days are. The rainy season of Marcy's illness has become a shower of that love all year long with Christmas a strong, focused jetstream.
If you want a resolution for the coming year, consider finding a family in need and keeping Christmas in mind for them all year long. You can be the ''Son'' in their rainy days.
Every Day Is Precious is a column to remind us to treat everyone we see today as if it could be the last time we see them. It is written by Rob Payne, whose wife, Marcy, was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) in August 2000. For more ways to help others, to find more about Marcy or to receive e-mail updates on her condition, visit www.EveryDayIsPrecious.com. Send to rob@everydayisprecious.com or to Every Day Is Precious, 2051 Harvington Drive, Franklin, TN 37069.
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