Merry Christmas & A Last Minute Paper Bow

I was busy minding my business walking the hall with a clipboard in one hand.

On a legal pad of paper was a long list of things I needed to take care of before checking them off that morning.

As I floated down the corridor to my next stop I happened to look up and noticed a petite woman in a doorway. She seemed stuck in her wheelchair as she tried to pull herself forward but the chair wouldn’t budge. I stopped to ask if I could help and she said yes that she needed to just get over the threshold.

Squeezing through the doorway behind her I gave the chair a nudge as she rolled the wheels with her arms and hands then thanked me in a soft-spoken voice.

I offered to push her further to where she was headed but she said she was fine.

We smiled at one another and I gave her small shoulder a slight rub and pat. That’s when she stopped pushing the wheels and turning to me she said…

“And thank you for patting my shoulder. It was nice. It felt like a hug.”

Later that evening I thought about the sweet woman I had met in passing.

How the simple gesture of a touch to her shoulder felt like an embrace she said. And without knowing it she encouraged me with her kindness by telling me so.

And I was glad that at just the right moment that morning I looked up from my notepad to see her in the doorway… otherwise I may have missed a blessing.

And guess what I needed on Christmas Eve?

A big bow.

A pretty, loopty-loop one for a gift to my niece and her husband — young newlyweds making a home for themselves on the Army base where they live. In their package was a frame with a reminder of something they can do for each other every day.

Of course I couldn’t find a bow anywhere in the house, but while scrounging around I did find calculator tape I had almost thrown out. So I pulled a few feet off the roll and snipped long straight cuts at each end leaving a few inches alone in the center. The lengthy strands curled nicely and after tying it together it made the perfect, last-minute white paper bow.

Oh, and inside the gold frame for my niece and new nephew are three simple words we can all live by…

Love One Another.

Merry Christmas Friends!