Mickey Bambrick once felt everyone was taking advantage of her. It seemed that the people she had decided to help were overstepping their bounds. She wondered if she were doing good just because God said she should, but without a cheerful heart. Did her bad attitude cancel out the good?
I had spent many hours and dollars on some disadvantaged kids in our neighborhood and it was getting to the point where their grandma just expected things of me. I felt resentful of her. The kids lived with her, but didn't seem to be a priority in her life. She called one day as Christmas was approaching and told me about some girl who wasn't going to have much of a Christmas. She wanted to know if I could buy her something.
I stewed on that request. I couldn't get over the nerve of her calling and asking me to do something for someone I didn't even know. Wasn't I doing enough already for her kids? Now I have to take on someone else's? It's not as if we had a lot of money.
A few days later, I was shopping and saw a box with two dolls in it, one dark-haired and one light-haired. I thought about the little girl. Because it seemed like a bargain at $15, I bought the dolls, but I wasn't happy about it. I tossed the box in my cart with some begrudging mutter, took it home and wrapped it up. Right before Christmas, I gave it to the grandma. I never heard a word about it after that. For all I knew, the girl never got it or the grandma said it was from her.
When I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to see my paternal grandma, but she never failed to buy us Christmas gifts and leave them with my maternal grandma. My maternal grandma would change the nametags to say they were from her. As an adult I found out my favorite childhood doll had really come from my other grandma. Oh well, I thought, just let it go. And so I did.
About a year and a half later, I was out walking my dog and saw a little girl about seven years old playing in a yard. When I passed by, she yelled out, "I've seen that dog before!" I told her that we lived around the corner and sometimes I walked him by here. She came over and bent down to pet the dog. It struck me that she might know the neighborhood kids I knew. They always told me they had a friend named Joan (not her real name) who lived on our block. I asked the girl if her name was Joan. "No, that's my grandma's name," she answered.
Then a light bulb went on. I asked her if she knew Aaron, Nick and Melanie. She did. Then I got curious and wondered if she might have been the unknown little girl I bought the dolls for. I asked: "Not last Christmas, but the one before that, did you get a couple of dolls for Christmas?"
"Oh, yes, Lucy is the light-haired one and Debbie is the dark-haired one. They are inside sleeping right now," she replied.
"Was that all you got that year?" I asked. "I think I got some other stuff, but I don't remember," she said. "Who gave you the dolls?" I asked. "Aaron's grandma," she answered.
Ah ha! That was it ... the grandma took all the credit. To prove myself right I asked, "Whom did she say they were from?" And God, in his mysterious ways, had to show me I can never give too much even if I do it with a rotten heart.
I got a lump in my throat when her response came: "She said they were from an angel."
(Freelance writer Mickey Bambrick is working on a book called It's a God Thing--A collection of true and amazing stories of what God has done. This story is from Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Treasury, by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Steve Zikman. It appears here with the author's permission.)