It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced
And then there was the guy with the tattoos and the swagger and the backward ball cap. My husband saw our daughter approach him and started to get upset because he thought this guy didn’t look “needy”. But it turned out, he was one of the most appreciative and gracious people she interacted with. He couldn’t believe anyone would do this for “Me? You’re doing this for ME?”. A misfit, maybe. Who cares? Jesus didn’t. And either did our daughter. I saw him transformed by our daughter, who was smiling as big as I have ever seen. As he left, he keep stopping and looking back at her, shaking his head with disbelief, waving, and smiling. His gift was far more than a gift card.
This heaven on earth continued and each time, the glow from our girls got brighter and brighter.
Who was giving who what?
Me and Mr. Wilkinson? We just wept and tried to hold it together. And tried to stay anonymous. I did speak with a few lovely people, who noticed me watching (I guess I’m not as subtle as I thought…it was probably the wailing) and came up to me with such open and raw emotion, I could hardly speak. One woman, standing there holding my husband’s hand and telling him she lost her husband that very day, a few years ago. And my husband’s face as he remembered he lost his own father on that every same day.
The cashiers with their Santa hats wept, we wept, people we will never see again, wept, hugged, believing that, at least for a little while, people cared about them. We gave the cashiers the last of the gift cards and they promptly gave them back to their customers. How. Completely. Awesome.
I was one of those people who made fun of the people of Walmart. And I’m an idiot. I don’t know anyone’s story, their background, their pain or their journey in this world. I judge the badly dressed, the overweight, the sloppy, the ignorant, the ill-mannered. The same ones, yesterday, who cried when someone offered them a small kindness. The ones who, when they figured out what my husband and I were doing hiding in the jewelry section across from the check-out lanes, came running over, looked us right in the eye, thanked us and complimented on our wonderful girls. There’s MY gift, right there. I haven’t gotten anything as precious as that.
So, I ask again – who was giving who what??
I absolutely did not want to share this story. There seemed to be no way to tell it without it reeking of self-satisfaction and self-congratulation. Ugh. I was encouraged (forced) by a very close friend, whom I did share it with, to go ahead and write about it. So I’m sharing it with the hope and prayer that other people can find their own Holy Land, and make a pilgrimage there to honor the birth of Jesus Christ by actually living His sacred message of sharing and sacrifice for others.
It starts with a question. Ask it first. Let it be answered. “Ask and you shall receive”
And boy, did we receive.
“May I buy your groceries?”
