Day 20-the recipient

Saturday I was delivered from a potentially nightmarish holiday encounter by an angel in disguise. This angel came in the unlikely form of a Sam's tire department employee, but he appeared on the spot at the exact minute I prayed for help. I'm not kidding... No, the situation wasn't dire, but that didn't stop me from lifting up a little prayer for help in the face of what looked like 45 minutes worth of lines between us and the exit. The short version of the mini-crisis we found ourselves in is this: We went to Sam's for four items on the Saturday before Christmas. One of those four items was an iPod shuffle that I was getting for a Christmas present, but it came with the down side that it required standing in an additional line to pick up the item after we paid for it in the normal check out queue. Nathan and I realized the full impact of this as Adrienne began to cry from hunger at the same time we saw the carts backed up into the store, each looking like it was piled high with quite a few more than four items. It looked very grim.

And it was into this dark scene that the tire department employee appeared by our sides and said in hushed tones "follow me, there's no line at tires." He whisked us right over to the almost deserted department and had us checked out in less than a minute. But it didn't stop there. He instructed us to follow him over to customer service where we were supposed to wait in another long line to receive the shuffle we had just purchased. He had us wait over to the side while he went directly to the employee who was unlocking the electronic merchandise behind the counter. He handed her the receipt, and within a minute had ascertained the info that there were no more shuffles in stock at our Sam's location. Sure it was bad news, but when I thought of how long we would have waited in lines to find that out if not for our wonderful helper, I couldn't help but break into a big smile. I left Sam's feeling like I had witnessed a mini-miracle, but in reality I believe I was just a recipient of someone who was doing his best to take Christmas back in his own way. He didn't have to do any of the things he did for us, but his going over and beyond the call of duty absolutely made my day. It helped drive home the point, it's really the little things that make Christmas special--things that everyone one of us is capable of doing in our own way!