A Family for Christmas

I have a lot of memories of unforgettable Christmases, like the ones where we traveled to spend Christmas with my grandparents, my grandparents traveled to be with us, the year we stayed with a relative in San Francisco while my father was in the hospital, I got my bride doll for Christmas that year. There were also the years I got my first Barbie, my first baby doll, my doll house, my first paint set or my first pair of bell bottom, low rider pants. There were also the years we played board games and ate special treats that my mother made.

But as memorable as those were the ones that were so special to me were after I came to my foster parents as a young adult. My biological family used Christmas for us to play "family-for-a-day". My foster parents used that day to demonstrate what was true every day of the year, that we were all truly family. When I came to my foster family my foster mother had told me that I was a child without a family.

My unofficial foster parents were a part of a large extended family so each member drew from a hat to see who they would give a gift to. That was the one gift that each person received for Christmas except for the children and me. My foster parents always had special gifts for me apart from the hat drawing. And when I got married my foster grandmother gave us a special gift for Christmas along with what I got from my foster parents. Every year until she died she made Christmas stockings for us which my foster mother filled with special things that she picked up through the year just for us. The year she died she went on a special trip to a national church convention and bought our Christmas gifts. They were already wrapped and waiting for us after she passed.

The gifts I received from my foster family were usually not that big. But what they were and how they were obtained said a lot about their love for me.

My foster mother came from a poor minister's family with five other sisters and a brother. She married a minister and had four children. So she was an expert in knowing how to give gifts that said something special without hurting her budget. I learned from that kind of caring in gifting to others and have carried that on in my own giving. It is a central part of our ministry because we have learned from experience that a special, thoughtful gift, no matter how small can help turn a person's life around.