This will bring tears to your eyes
Body: 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 whomever 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 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
hole 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. "I have something better in mind."
God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You maybe
going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to
bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.