A Father's Love

I was thinking about the best Christmas present I ever got, and it is not hard to decide upon. It was Christmas 1995, my sophomore year of college. All I wanted was a VCR (old days), because I was going to be taking a video course (again, the old days!). On Christmas morning, we started opening gifts, and all the gifts I opened were little bitty gifts, in my opinion, such as pajamas and a CD. Let me tell you, the pictures tell it all; I was acting like a spoiled child for sure because I was unhappy with the gifts. Then the gift came that was the shape of a VCR box. However, when I opened it up, inside the box was a stack of newspapers with a key chain/ keyless entry on top. Well, all I could say was, totally NOT GETTING IT, "You put an alarm on the car." You see, being a coach's/ teacher's kid, I did not have my own car yet.....until now! My parents had to make me go outside because I did not get it that they had gotten me a car for Christmas....I didn't get it until I walked outside in the freezing cold and there it was....a beautiful cherry red Honda Civic Hatchback, the most beautiful car I had ever seen, with a huge red bow on top. When it finally hit me, excited does not even describe the way I felt, not to mention the way Holly felt! I don't really know who was more excited that morning: me, Holly, my mom, or my dad. As soon as I stopped jumping, yelling, and laughing, we did what you would expect; we went driving around to show both sets of grandparents and my best friend. All were thrilled for me as well. So it seems obvious why this would be the best present, but now, it's not so much the car that made it the best present. It's how the car came to be that morning. You see, my parents had taken a lot of care to buy this car in secret, and then hide it at my grandparents' house until Christmas morning. And on Christmas morning, my dad got up very early, in the cold, and rode a bike the few miles to my grandparent's house to retrieve the car to be in the driveway that morning. I can just picture my dad doing this, and it still brings tears to my eyes that he would go to that much trouble. My sister and I are definitely "daddy's girls," but this was the ultimate sacrifice of gift-giving in my eyes. It shows to me how a father's love will go far beyond what I deserve, and it reminds me of THE PERFECT GIFT our Heavenly Father gave to us the first Christmas....loving us so much that He would give His own Son, sacrificing everything, when we didn't deserve it, but that is a Father's love! We were worth "the trouble" in His Eyes, and how amazing it is to know He loves us more than we could ever imagine.

"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6