Christmas Miracles

There are a couple things that I was reminded of after my family and I took the journey out towards Idaho City on that snowy Friday last week. I had planned on having our entire office travel out to deliver the gifts, but with the snow storm hitting earlier that day, I decided it would be better for them to stay back home with their families. So I took my family, and off we went.

Now, I’d never been to this persons house before, so we just went with the directions we had hoping that we would end up where we needed to be.  Well, we traveled too far up into the mountains just before Idaho City. Finally after being told by Reagan (my wife)  a few times to stop and ask for help, I pulled up to a man who was plowing the roads and his driveway with his tractor. I asked where this specific house was, and he looked at our car (family mini van) and just laughed.

He said, “Do you have all-wheel-drive in this thing?!”  I said, “Of course not.” And he was surprised we had continued up the mountain for so long. He shook his head and laughed. He told us to go back down the mountain about 8 miles…yeah, I should have stopped earlier…but hey, I’m a guy and that’s how I do things sometimes.

So we get back down to where he told us to go, which is actually where we initially thought that we should be…of course.  I pulled in to an area where there were a bunch of mail boxes for the community and there was a guy putting chains on his truck tires…and here I am, rollin’ in a minivan like an idiot, with my entire family on board.

I asked him if he knew the specific address, and he pointed up the hill and said that he thought it was up there somewhere. Initially he said that he would follow us up the hill, but luckily then decided that he would take the trek up the hillside in his truck and scope it out for us. So he and his wife made their way up the hill…

OK – have you seen those Ford, Chevy or Dodge commercials where they drive the trucks in the craziest conditions just to show how awesome the trucks are? Yeah, that was him. He plowed through the snow, tires throwing up so much snow I felt like I was re-living one of those truck commercials….I should have filmed it. But after seeing that, I was thinking, “OK, there’s no way we’re getting up there in this van. We’re going to hike with all these presents up to the house and deliver this Christmas no matter what!”

He came back down and reported that he found the house, but that nobody was home.

Ok. So I had no cell service. I was only 72% sure that the address was completely accurate and wasn’t sure what to do.

So our new found friend, Jason, offered to help us no matter what. He and his wife wanted to make sure that everything was delivered. I decided that I had to call our contact to see when we could get these gifts inside and under the tree, so I jumped in Jason’s truck and went up the other side of the mountain to their house to use a land line to call and get everything arranged.

This was a bit more involved than I care to even recount, but I had to call person A to get to person B to see if Giving Tree family was home, who then had to call back over to me…it was a crazy web of calls, just to figure out if we could get these delivered immediately or if I needed to dig a snow cave and stay the night.

It was all sorted out, and within 30 minutes we were back down the hill, loaded up all the gifts in Jason’s truck and up the hill we went!

Quincy (my youngest) looks thrilled, I know. But we got everything delivered and were so happy to be part of the whole thing to make this Christmas amazing for this family.

Though all of this I was reminded that:

Miracles Happen – even if they are just small miracles. Jason and his wife didn’t need to help us. They didn’t need to take take out of their lives to help us or this family, but they did. And I don’t think that it was “just by chance” that everything happened the way it did.

Giving is far better than receiving – all of us have so much. We take it for granted. Myself included. But I was reminded that the best thing that we can do in our lives is to give of ourselves, our time, and resources to help those who need help. 

I hope that all of you who helped donate this year know how truly truly grateful I am for you and your generosity in giving of your time, and your resources to help us this year.

From our tree to theirs.