My story

In
September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75
cents in my pocket.
Their
father was gone.
The boys
ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was
two.
Their Dad
had never been much more than a presence they feared.
Whenever
they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway
they would
scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to
buy groceries.
Now that he had decided to leave,
there would be no more beatings, but no food
either.
If there was a welfare system in
effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing
about it.
I
scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best
homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off
to find a job.
The seven of us went to every factory,
store and restaurant in our small
town.
No
luck.
The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be
quiet while I tried to convince who ever would listen that I was
willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a
job.
Still no luck. The last place we
went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel
drive-in t hat had been converted to a truck
stop.
It was
called the Big Wheel.
An old lady named Granny owned the place
and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all
those kids.
She
needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the
morning.
She paid
65 cents an hour, and I could start that
night.
I raced
home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for
people.
I
bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a
night.
She could
arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be
asleep
This
seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That
night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God
for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big
Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter
up and sent her home
with one dollar of my tip money-- fully half of what I
averaged every
night.
As the
weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager
wage.
The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny
balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to
work and again every morning before I could go
home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged
myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat.
New tires!
There was
no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new
tires.
Had
angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.
I made a deal
with the local service station.
In exchange for his mounting the new
tires, I would clean up his office.
I remember it took me a lot longer
to scrub his floor than it did for him to do
the tires.
I was now working six nights instead of five and it
still wasn't enough.
Christmas was coming and I knew
there would be no money for toys for the
kids.
I found a can of red paint and
started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the
basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas
morning.
Clothes
were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys
pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On
Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big
Wheel. There were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state
trooper named Joe.
A few musicians were hanging around
after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball
machine.
The regulars all just sat around and
talked through the wee hours of the
morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.
When
it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning,
to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with
boxes of all shapes and sizes.
I quickly opened the driver's side
door, crawled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back
seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top
box.
Inside
was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes
2-10!
I looked
inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the
jeans.
Then I
peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and nuts and
bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking,
and canned vegetables and potatoes.
There was pudding and Jell-O and
cookies, pie filling and flour. There was whole bag of laundry supplies and
cleaning items.
And there
were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove
back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing
Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with
gratitude.
And I
will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious
morning.
Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago
December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck
stop..
THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that God only gives three
answers to
prayer:
1. 'Yes!'
2. 'Not yet.'
3. 'I
have something better in mind.'
God still sits on the throne, the
devil is a liar.
You maybe
going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless
you in a way that you cannot imagine

This prayer is powerful, and prayer
is one of the best gifts we receive. There is no cost but a lot
of rewards

People in life who are the
happiest don't have the best of
everything... They make the best
of everything they have.