Be Giving

My husband and I have been so stressed lately trying to get all of our Christmas shopping done.  Unfortunately, we've been way to bogged down with the stress of the holiday than the joy of it.  This really came out the other day while we were doing some of our Christmas shopping after he got off work.  However, while we were shopping that we were struck by something.  We realized that almost every store we went into had a giving tree put up at the front of the stores for customers to participate in.  It made us stop in our tracks, and realize that there were a lot of people in our community that are in need.  It totally took us out of our bad moods and made us stop and realize that weren't in the giving spirit at all.  We both really wanted to fix that in ourselves as soon as we realized it.

It was so crazy seeing all of those giving trees up everywhere, and seeing the effect that our poor economy has had on our community this holiday season.  There are just so many people who can't afford Christmas this year.  You see, my mom raised me to be a cheerful giver.  She was always getting us kids involved in the giving tree at our church.  Actually, my favorite part of Christmas growing up was picking out the names, shopping for their presents, wrapping the presents, and then taking them up to the church to put them under the tree.  I should thank my mom for raising me to be giving, or else I would have never stopped myself the other day.

Luckily, I was reminded of all this when I saw those giving trees the other day.   I brought it up to my husband and he felt the same way.  We apologized to each toher and our attitudes changed instantly once we'd realized how silly we were being.  We picked out two boys names at our local Kroger's giving tree.  The boy wants a playmobil hospital with playmobil add ons, and the other boy wants one of these lol.  I guess he wants to be a cowboy when he grows up.  We went shopping yesterday and bought these gifts, and had such a fun time doing it.  We were so joyful the whole time.  It was totally different from when we went a couple days ago.  We are really excited to take the presents back up to Kroger today.  Giving trees are the best!  Peace.