A Christmas Tribute to my Mother

Carrie, the kids, and I are heading down this evening to spend a few days visiting my side of the family in the days leading up to Christmas. I treasure my little hometown near Paducah, Kentucky. Truth be told, I'm not really from a "town" because I was raised on a farm miles away from anything that could be considered "city limits." That affords me the opportunity to claim many towns in my home county as "hometown" because they all are significant to my upbringing. For instance, I went to elementary school in Bandana; my family's farm supply store is in the town of Kevil; my high school is addressed in Barlow; my childhood house has a LaCenter address; Monkey's Eyebrow is just a couple of miles away from Bandana and is likely the most famous of all towns in Ballard County; but perhaps most of my treasured memories are in Oscar because that is where my home church (Oscar United Methodist) is found. This serves as the introduction for this post, which is a tribute to an act near Christmas that my mother did for years.

Christmas is without question my mother's favorite time of the year. You should see the amount of trees she puts up in the house. Each room in her house has at least two (though many of them are quite small). But the part of my mother's Christmas tradition that always stands out to me is an anonymous act she did for a widowed lady in our church for years. Mrs. Polly was her name (she passed away several years ago). Mrs. Polly's husband was a distant relative of my paternal grandmother, who is still living.

My mom is one of the most compassionate people I know. She is tender-hearted and displayed this through her generosity every year by giving gifts to Mrs. Polly when she wasn't looking. Something in my mother's heart stirred to show love to Mrs. Polly, so she decided to give her 12 gifts every Christmas. My brothers and I got to participate by being the deliverers of the presents on one of the Sundays in Advent after dropping off Mom at the church. This would assist in the anonymity of her act because Mrs. Polly would generally already be there. It could be that she figured it out by the time she passed away, but she never gave any indication that she figured out it was my mother who was behind it all. Every year mom would give her 12 gifts for the 12 days of Christmas. Every year, Mrs. Polly would post a thank you note to "the anonymous angel" on the bulletin board in the foyer of the Church the following Sunday.

Now I know that I'm cashing this in, but for Mrs. Polly this act was done in secret, and to many others it went unnoticed. I've been dwelling on this memory this season. And I remember this: "Thus when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you...But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." The act of giving does something in us just as it displays that our hearts are being made more holy. Do some anonymous giving sometime.