Holiday Miracles

Hello readers!

Wow! The last time I posted was Christmas Eve and let me tell you... a LOT has happened since then! Honestly, I am quite overwhelmed as a blogger. I have so much to share and I do not know where to begin. I think I would like to share a side story with you. Something that happened so randomly while we were in St. Louis.

This occurred about 10 minutes after I wrote my previous post while we were in the hospital. The hospital staff told us we could go upstairs to visit Grandma in her new room. As we were leaving, we came across an older man who was passing out newspapers. He works for the hospital and had this huge cart with him. He asked us if we wanted a paper and was not at all clear in his speech. With further observation, I decided that he was cognitively delayed somehow. We decline the newspaper politely and turned away. He said "Wait, wait" and then robotically proceeded to go to his cart and pull out a binder. He placed it on a table and opened it to the first page and said "Read it" and pointed. My sister M, my mom, my grandpa and I all glanced curiously at each other. Then we started to read (click to enlarge):

I hope you can read at least the first part of it. I had my iPhone and snapped a picture quickly.

His binder

This man, James, was a candidate for a PhD studying microbiology. In 1975, he was riding his bike and was struck by a car in Boulder, CO. Now, his body works but his mind is not as sharp at it used to be. From the binder, I could tell that so many people care for him. His friends and family wrote letters and poems about the tragedy and there were numerous articles about him and his previous work. He was also in the army and was joking to the best of his abilities that my mom needed to do push-ups. We would whisper to ourselves, "Wow, that's amazing", etc and he would say "yep. yep. Push-ups!" with a huge smile on his face. I could tell that the binder had been through a lot. He must show it to countless people everyday. What a gift that his friends and family put that together for him to show to people!

James's story just proves that we need to be thankful for what we have. I feel that I have been complaining so much recently. For now on, I will stop and think about James. He was a Christmas miracle for me. As I was waiting to see what was going on with my grandmother, I meet this wonderful human being. Then, I find out that my grandmother was fine - it wasn't a heart attack after all. How wonderful! James was definitely our angel that day which is why I am sharing this story with you all. I know that he would want me to share it.

***********************************

I will post more about Christmas soon, but in the meantime, here is another Christmas miracle: We had 4 generations present! Here is my nephew Liam and his great grandpa. What do you think of their matching hats?

I typically don't like posting pictures of people on my blog, but I couldn't resist with this one! My sister M (Liam's mama) planned this picture because my grandpa wears these hats all the time!

Tomorrow I am making my way back to DC and will be stopping briefly in Pittsburgh to visit my other grandparents. Then, I will be back and will (finally) exchange presents with Dan and his family! I am super excited!

Btw, I know I have received some tags and awards recently and I have not been the best about my response. I will hopefully get to them soon - I really do appreciate them ALL! I am so grateful for you guys.

Talk to you soon!

hugs,

Julie