Stories of Kindness from Around the World

Something happened today to make me realise just how much love I have in my house and I am so thankful for that.

My husband used to work in a bank but during the credit crunch he lost his job. The economy wasn't looking good and he didn't have too many options to get another bank job.  It was incredibly difficult to see him go to the warehouse to look for work, hoping and praying that he would be offered a position (where he would be paid even less than his own teenage children were making).  Someone dear to me encouraged him to keep on "keeping on" and I was right behind them.  I told him to just "go for it". 

He got the job and it brought us such a feeling of pride.  With his new job we were still able to pay our mortgage and buy our groceries.  But money was still very tight. I work in a Church, so you can guess that I don't get paid a whole lot of money for my job (but I do get a lot of gratification).  We had to pay land and school taxes and a few other expenses were coming up so he went to look for another job.  The warehouse job was just on the weekends - three 13 hour shifts.  He found another job for the holiday season, with Fedex, making deliveries from Monday to Thursday.  Once he started working both jobs I hardly ever saw him and these past six weeks he has worked every single day. 

He has been working so hard so I wanted to make it an extra special Christmas this year.  I wanted our house to be filled with company - I didn't want anybody to be alone this year.  I finally got round to getting the Christmas tree out yesterday and I worked all day to make the house look festive. 

When my husband walked through the door at 8pm today he looked exhausted.  When he saw the house he broke in to the biggest smile, he grabbed me and gave me a huge hug.  And then he apologized for not being around and not being able to help me with all the preparations for Christmas.  He said he knew it had been hard on me that he hadn't been around and he was grateful that I had not complained.

I almost fell over!! He was apologising for working so hard to feed us and keep a roof over our head!  He was doing two jobs that made much less than his previous job and coming home exhausted and he was standing there apologising for not helping me!  I said that I had no words to tell him how much I LOVED him and how PROUD I was of him and that he was such a great great husband and father and provider for us. 

With this amount of love in our house - we will always have more than 'enough'!