[Singles] Fw: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: FW: Best E-Mail I've read all year.

Wed Dec 19 10:16:34 CST 2012

From: Jenna Kidd 
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 8:42 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: FW: Best E-Mail I've read all year.

----- Original Message ---- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Sent: 12/18/2012 9:38:15 A.M. Central Standard Time
  Subj: FW: Best E-Mail I've read all year.

                                 In  September 1960, I woke up one  morning  with  six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my  pocket. 

                                Their father was  gone..

                                The boys ranged from three  months to seven years; their sister was two.  

                                Their Dad had never been much  more than a presence they feared.  

                                Whenever they heard his tires  crunch on the gravel driveway they would  scramble to hide under their  beds.

                                He did manage to leave $15  a week to buy groceries. 

                                Now  that he had decided to leave, there would be no  more beatings, but no food  either.

                                If there was a welfare  system in effect in southern Indiana at that  time, I certainly knew nothing about it.  

                                I scrubbed the kids until they  looked brand new and then put on my best  homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old  51 Chevy and drove off to find a job..  

                                The seven of us went to every  factory, store  and  restaurant in our small town. 

                                No  luck.

                                The kids stayed crammed  into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried  to convince who ever would listen that I was  willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a  job.

                                Still no luck. The last  place we went to, just a few miles out of town,  was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had  been converted to a truck stop.  

                                It was called the Big Wheel.  

                                An old lady named Granny owned  the place and she peeked out of the window from  time to time at all those kids.  

                                She needed someone on the  graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the  morning. 

                                She paid 65 cents an  hour, and I could start that night.  

                                I raced home and called the  teenager down the street that baby-sat for  people. 

                                I bargained with her to  come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night.  

                                She could arrive with her  pajamas on and the kids would already be  asleep

                                This seemed like a good  arrangement to her, so we made a deal.  

                                That night when the little ones  and I knelt to  say  our prayers, we all thanked God for finding  Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.  

                                When I got home in the mornings  I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with  one dollar of my tip money-- fully half of what  I averaged every night. 

                                As the  weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to  my meager wage. 

                                The tires on the  old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons  and began to leak. I had to fill them with air  on the way to work and again every morning  before I could go home. 

                                One  bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car  to go home and found four tires in the back  seat. New tires!

                                There was no  note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new  tires.. 

                                Had angels taken up  residence in Indiana ? I  wondered.

                                I made a deal with the  local service station.. 

                                In  exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would  clean up his office. 

                                I remember  it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than  it did for him to do the tires.

                                I  was now working six nights instead of five and  it still wasn't enough.  

                                Christmas was coming and I knew  there would be no money for toys for the kids .  

                                I found a can of red paint and  started repairing and painting some old toys.  Then I hid them in the basement so there would  be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas  morning.. 

                                Clothes were a worry  too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on  the boys pants and soon they would be too far  gone to repair.

                                On Christmas Eve  the usual customers were drinking coffee in the  Big Wheel. There were the truckers, Les, Frank,  and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.  

                                A few musicians were hanging  around after a gig at the Legion and were  dropping nickels in the pinball  machine.  

                                The regulars all just sat around and  talked through the wee hours of the morning and  then left to get home before the sun came up.  

                                When it was time for me to go  home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to  my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled  full to the top with boxes of all shapes and  sizes. 

                                I quickly opened the  driver's side door, crawled inside and kneeled  in the front facing the back  seat..

                                Reaching back, I pulled  off the lid of the top box.  

                                Inside was whole case of little  blue jeans, sizes 2-10! 

                                I looked  inside another box: It was full of shirts to go  with the jeans. 

                                Then I peeked  inside some of the other boxes. There was candy  and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries.  There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned  vegetables and potatoes. 

                                There was  pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and  flour. There was whole bag of laundry supplies  and cleaning items. 

                                And there  were five toy trucks and one beautiful little  doll.

                                As I drove back through  empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most  amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing  with gratitude. 

                                And I will never  forget the joy on the faces of my little ones  that precious morning.

                                Yes, there  were angels in Indiana that long-ago December.  And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck  stop.   

                                THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that  God only gives three answers to  prayer:

                                1. 'Yes!'

                                2. 'Not  yet.' 

                                3! have something better in mind.'  

                                God still sits on the throne,  and the devil is a liar. 

                                You may  be going through a tough time right now but God  is getting ready to bless you in a way that you  cannot imagine. 

                                My instructions  were to pick four people that I wanted God to  bless, and I picked you. 

                                Pass  this to at least four people you want to be  blessed and a copy back to  me.

                                This prayer is powerful, and  prayer is one of the best gifts we receive.  There is no cost but a lot of rewards  

                                Let's continue to pray for one  another. Here is the  prayer:

                                Father, I ask You to  bless my friends, relatives and email buddies  reading this right now. Show them a new  revelation of Your love and power.  

                                Amen.

                                I know I picked  more than four, so can  you.  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mishmash.net/pipermail/singles_mishmash.net/attachments/20121219/8175bd39/attachment-0001.htm>