madamekelly

This is a difficult story for me, but one of the best Christmases ever.
In August 1985 my DH was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. That Christmas we were living in a little bitty trailer, in a little bitty trailer park ,near the hospital so he could have his Chemo without travel time, to make it easier to get him back "home". When Christmas rolled around we had no money for gifts or decorations (ours were in storage in our home town 300 miles away, and unavailable to us). One day in mid December my 2 DD and I went to a food bank to get help, and I met a wonderful older nun who interviewed me, and we talked for several minutes, one of her questions was "did I have faith?". I said yeah, I guess I do. It was a rough question to answer at that time.
On Christmas Eve, I sent DH with our last seven dollars to get some decorations to use on the tree that the neighbor gave us as a gift. While he was gone, the same nun knocked on our door and announced that we had been adopted for Christmas! They brought in more food than we could store, and offered to hold the excess for us, many gifts for DD's and ourselves, they also brought a star and tree skirt for our tree, and an invitation to dinner at the Convent. I remember being overwhelmed with so much kindness. When DH came home and found all the gifts, he cried. I remember his words "My babies will have a Christmas morning!". The seven dollars he took with him got us four packages those old styrofoam apple ornaments in two sizes. Our tree was wonderful with nothing but those silly tacky apples and gifted star and skirt. During the night our youngest DD (age 3 1/2) got up and opened every one of the gifts. I caught her at it when I woke up at about 3 am. I spent the rest of the night patching paper and rewrapping the gifts.
What no one knew was that that would be his last Christmas. He was gone by August. I still hang an apple on my tree to remember my best Christmas ever when I learned that a little faith can work miracles.