Christmas Miracles

If you hadn’t noticed this is Christmas week. I am not one for sending out cards or anything like that. Sure they are nice and all but it has never been something that we have gotten into. Instead of a card sent out to the winds, you can consider this a season’s greeting and what not.

I don’t really spend much time talking about the world I live in. I would very much rather get down to business and share stories and such instead of boring you with the world I live in outside of these pages. But I am going to break back the barriers a bit to get into a few things I have seen recently that give me a bit of faith that humanity isn’t quite as doomed as it seems sometimes.

flickr creative commons via John Stratford
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Retail is the bane of most people’s working lives. I took a job a short time ago, working a register, to help bring in some extra cash at home. The intention was a part time job with no responsibilities. Circumstances don’t always work out the way we intend. Right now I have been working fulltime plus and actually have keys to the place. They trust me with power apparently (that is never a good mix). But I digress…

Anyway, you might think the super introverted, with interaction anxiety person that I am is not fit to deal with the public at large. But this is a strange part of my personality. I tend to be an outgoing introvert to keep people at a distance. What this means while working a register is I can joke and laugh with the people which in turns keeps them happy and adds to their shopping enjoyment. I am able to have some distance between myself and them so that I can observe human behavior without dirtying my hands (so to speak). For the most part this isn’t super draining on my energies (until you figure in I haven’t really had a day off in close to a month.)

Now then, a listing of miracles. Through the course of holiday shopping we have had a toy drive set up. Of course people buy toys and drop them off, but that is one of those things you kind of expect people to do. I have been witness to a couple occasions recently where I have seen customers go out of their way to help out other customers. When one didn’t have enough money for something, another customer picked up the slack and aided where they could.

Which brings me back to the toy drive. At one point, a couple of women had come in with full intention to not only fill our collection point but to start up another box of toys. In then end they spent well over 200 dollars on toys for those in need. The store I work in is a discount store. This bought a large number of toys. The energy involved with all of this filled you. It was a moment I was happy to be a part of.

And now or the last miracle of the day. I can’t remember if I had spoken of the issues that my youngest grand daughter has been going through here. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 9 months old. This week she suffered with the flu.

For a normal human being, the flu is simply something that beats on you, you feel like hell, and then you are better. For someone with type 1 diabetes it can be a killer. When she starts throwing up it becomes a trip to the hospital. After two trips to the ER with a temperature of 104, she had slipped into ketoacidosis. This means that her body was no longer using sugar for fuel. Instead it had started feeding on her fat stores. Her body was eating itself in order to survive.

Though it is a scary situation, it is not an uncommon occurrence for diabetics. This also meant her second stay in the hospital in less than six months. We were afraid that we may be spending Christmas in the hospital this year. But the miracle came when she started eating again and her ketones had dropped to acceptable levels. They released her from the hospital yesterday and she is acting like her normal self now.

Now then, with all that said. I hope you have a merry holiday of your choice. Next week will be a bit like this week. I will probably have a total of two posts to share. Though I have no idea of what they will be. Maybe we can all be surprised at what we find.