Story # 3

entitled: Thank you, Jesus...No really, thank you.

This story takes us to Tennessee about 5 years ago, where I had just finished opening presents with my family on a cold and snowy Christmas morning. My sister, Mara, and I were putting some of our things away in our room when we realized we still had my mom's box to open that she had mailed to us. Excitedly, we sat down on the rug and started pulling wrapped presents out of the box. Immediately we noticed that a lot of our gifts looked to be the same shape, hence, probably the same gift, so we decided to open those at the same time.

Now, before I go any further with this story, I have to mention that my mom had started a new little thing where whenever she gave us presents (for any occasion) a lot of the time instead of signing them, "Love Mom" she would sign them, "Love Jesus" meaning that if it weren't for Jesus, we wouldn't be getting the gifts to begin with. Something SO TYPICAL for my mom to do. She didn't do it all the time for every little thing, it was usually when she gave us something expensive or extremely sentimental.

Okay, back to the story. So Mara and I are opening presents and we get down to two somewhat small items that look to be identical. I look on my tag, and it's "From Jesus," so I'm thinking, oh boy! These are probably our special gifts, so we count to 3 and rip them open at the same time to reveal...(suspenseful drumroll please!)...nail clipper sets. Now, Mara, just says something like, Oh cool. I on the other hand, was sporting a rather perplexed look on my face while simply turning the clipper set over and over in my hands.

me- Mara, uh, what does your tag say?
mara- Ummm, it says to mara from mom, why?
me- (a slow nod of the head)Well...Mine is from...Jesus.
---long pause---
mara- Mom signed it from Jesus???? So..(stifling laughter) Jesus got you
nail clippers? I guess you need to take better care of your nails of Jesus himself is getting you nail clippers!


I immediatly picked up the phone and called my mom to ask why in the heck was my clipper set specifically from Jesus, while Mara's was from her. My mom thought it was terribly funny and said it hadn't been on purpose. She had just wanted to make sure at least one gift was marked from Jesus. She had meant to sign the beautiful journal, but goofed and signed the nail clippers instead...