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!
