"Bonus Blog - THANK YOU means a lot!!!!"

   1 Chronicles 16:34 

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

    his love endures forever.

Hoping for a White Christmas

    This time of year we all receive gifts.  Some gifts are things that we are not sure why we are getting.  Others are so extraordinary that they leave us speechless.

   One particular gift my brothers and I received is a perfect example of the kind of gift that you get that makes you go "HMMMMMM?".  When I was about 10 years old, my grandmother, (God Bless Her Soul) sent me and my brothers the same square gift that was heavy.  Now my brothers and I used to judge gifts by their weight.  In our brief experience as kids we had determined that a heavy gift was a good gift.  So you can imagine that when we had our grandmothers gift in our hands we thought we had struck gold.  But, to our surprise and shock when we ripped the paper off we held in our hands a three pack of AQUA VELVA aftershave.  Now, remember I was 10 years old, which made my two brothers eight and seven.  We looked to our mom and dad for help and just got a shrug.  My mom then said, "We can put it away for a later date, when you will need it."  At that point we tossed the aftershave aside and began looking for something else under the tree.  Later, when we talked with grandma we were very gracious and thanked her for thinking of us.

My best Christmas gift

    On the other hand, there are gifts that you get that leave you speechless.  I have had a couple of them throughout my life, but nothing like this year.  This year, I got the gift of my wife getting through her brain surgery and recovering well.  This is the best gift I have ever received.  Three weeks ago, I had the worst day of my life.We found out that my wife had a tumor the size of a golf ball in her head.  After the initial shock we were told that it was benign, but she was still faced with a very long and dangerous brain surgery.
    The day of her surgery was the longest day of my life.  Nine hours of waiting to hear from the surgeon isn't a piece of cake.  When the surgeon finally called me and said that Cecelia was going to be fine, except for the loss of her hearing in the left ear.  I was overwhelmed with emotion.  As soon as I hung up the phone with the doctor, I immediately took a moment to Thank God.  There wasn't anything else I could say.  It was one of those gifts that you can never repay and is so overwhelming that there is only one thing to do, look God in the proverbial eye and say "Thank You" with as much sincerity as you can muster.
    So, during this season of thanks and praise, let's take a moment to say a heartfelt "THANK YOU" to God for giving us his son.  We can't do or say enough to repay him for his gift, so a sincere THANK YOU is enough.
   Merry Christmas!!!!!!!