Christmas Miracle

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 knewnothing 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 t hat 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 no w 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. "I have something better in mind."