AUTHOR: Sheri Lynch TITLE: Christmas for an Orphan DATE: 12/12/2006 12:40:00 PM ----- BODY:

Some things I’ve learned this week: Moving at Christmas is not the best idea. If you do move at Christmas, and, while unpacking, come across any box marked “miscellaneous”, do not open it. Ever. It’s bound to be full of rubber bands, cap snafflers, plastic cups, piles of paper that you didn’t deal with prior to moving and therefore probably won’t be dealing with now, and random bits of plastic from God knows where. Just chuck the whole box into a Dumpster and never think of it again. When it comes to helping around the house, the only truly useful trait your average three year-old brings to the job is enthusiasm. For example, when Caramia offered to “help” me clean the bathroom, I didn’t realize she defined “help” as enthusiastically walloping the freshly painted walls with a wrench. If you have a painful injury, like say, four or five burned fingers and maybe a brutally scraped knee, count on banging those wounded parts repeatedly into every available surface. What’s left of Mark’s left knee is now being held together by Band-aids, and one of my burned fingers was torn open yesterday when the (again, always helpful) Caramia tried to stake our inflatable Santa into the ground directly through my hand. The Barbie Mermaidia books are just truly, resoundingly, irredeemably awful. I like Barbie – I love Barbie. I have for years. And I’ll support her even if growing wings or fins or gills or whatever is part of her path to self-actualization. I want Barbie to be happy as much as the next girl. Just don’t make me read the Mermaidia books aloud, over and over again. The evil Fungi. The true-self berries. Bibble and the magic seaweed. I can’t find my dishes yet, but this doesn’t get lost in the move? I swear that book crawled out of a box on its own just to torment me. Watching your little girl rehearse for her first ballet recital is a purely magical moment. There she was, my precious Olivia, remembering all of her steps, smiling and twirling, very pleased with herself. I almost cried, seeing her looking so grown up. Later, I told her how beautifully she and her friends had danced, how proud I was. She snorted and said, “Of course, Mommy. That’s because we’re real ballerinas now. Did you forget that?” Oops. Guess I did. Won’t make that mistake again. Christmas for an Orphan is an amazing World Help project that everyone should know about. I learned about it from Lorie Funderburk, whose church is involved. Last year, volunteers put together 10 thousand boxes, containing mostly necessities along with a bit of candy and a small toy. Her pastor and his wife took the boxes to India, where there were 28 thousand needy children. Obviously, there weren’t enough boxes to go around. Let me quote Lorie directly: “There was a sort of panic among the workers. They scrimmaged on the sidelines to try and figure out what to do. None of the workers wanted to go back to the line and face those kids and tell then that some would be left out. They came to grips with the obvious: no more boxes were going to magically appear. With heavy hearts, they headed back to the line to break the awful news, but the announcement was never made. Instead, the workers witnessed something magical. The little kids, realizing that there were no more boxes had, spontaneously, each sought out an older child who had no gift and began sharing the contents of their boxes with those older children….those boxes, though meager in content, are more than what they appear to us. They offer physical proof to poor, hopeless children that someone cares about them.” To learn more about Christmas for an Orphan, contact World Help at 1-800-541-6691 or online at

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