Best e-mail EVER

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 may be going through a tough time right now but God is
getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.

My instructions were to pick four people that I wanted God to
bless,
and I picked you.

Please pass this to at least four people you want to be blessed
and a copy back to me.

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

Let’s continue to pray for one another. Here is the prayer:….

Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and email
buddies reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of
Your love and power.
Amen.