----- Original Message -----
From: MARIE FULLER
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 10:30 AM
Subject: BEST EMAIL ALL YEAR!!!!
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 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 that 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 ? 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 a 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 a 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 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 on 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:....
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