Christmas

This Christmas is one that our family will never forget. During Thanksgiving week, I got a call from the Post Falls police department informing me that our family was nominated and chosen to participate in the Holidays and Heroes program. This program allows families in need to create a Christmas list of three wants and three needs for each member of their family, the police officers do the shopping, and then they show up at your house with wrapped boxes of presents. I tried to tell them that we were doing okay financially, even after our rough few months of hospital bills, and surely this could bless another family more than ours, but they insisted that if anything our family needed to know that we were loved. A couple weeks later, the officers showed up with more gifts than we could have imagined, along with boxes of food, crafts for my kids, a handmade quilt for Brooklyn, and more. We were not in need of all of the food, so we were able to pass some on to families in need in our community. It felt good to be able to bless others because we had been so blessed.

Then a friend at our church nominated us and we were chosen to receive 15 beautiful books for our kids' personal library. Once again, we felt loved and noticed. 

When we were going through our rough patch, both Kyle and I often wondered where God's love was or if He was aware of our family at all. It was hard not to feel like we had been abandoned in a time when we needed God most. When all of this happened for Christmas, Kyle mentioned that it was like God's way of showing us that He was there and we were loved all along. Maybe we didn't "need" everything we were blessed with, but we surely felt loved, so if that was the goal, it was accomplished.

We are going to contribute to both of these programs next year to spread love to other families who may just need to know that they are not forgotten and are loved.