Christmas Lights

This morning my hubby told me he wanted to take me for a drive this evening to look at Christmas lights. I thought it was a great idea and looked forward to it all day. (But then, I always look forward to dates with my sweetie.) So after dinner we set out for a drive around town. But before I can continue I need to interject another story here.

Earlier this week I received an email at work about a little 5 year old girl here in Lititz who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in October and only has a few months to live. She is practically immobile at this point, but her only Christmas wish was to receive lots and lots of cards. Later the same day I got the same email at home from a friend in our home group. Now being a skeptic on internet-related things, I had to check out this story and went to Snopes to check it out. Not only was the story true, but Elvin recognized that he knew the grandparents from his teaching days. Little Hannah had made big news. (For Hannah's story go to www.caringbridge.org/visit/hannahgarman). As I read her story and the journal entries posted on the mentioned site, I discovered that several fire companies had decided on Monday to get a "few" companies together to take cards to Hannah this evening. As the week wore on more and more companies were planning to attend this event. Today's local paper predicted about 30 trucks would be involved. The event was getting bigger and bigger. The firemen and their trucks were now meeting at Heart of Lancaster and traveling in a convoy to deliver the cards to Hannah.

Now with that background back to my story of our evening of "lights." As we were leaving our house, I mentioned to Elvin that I thought it would be fun to drive out to Hannah's street just to see what was happening. So we did. As we were driving north on Route 501, I realized that we were ahead of the convoy. We continued north and then parked in a parking lot close to Hannah's home. We watched in awe as a procession of more than 100 emergency vehicles traveled east on Newport Rd. to Lititz Area Mennonite School. We learned that due to the overwhelming response, Hannah had been taken there for her special surprise. What a beautiful sight to see - all of these emergency vehicles with flashing red and blue lights in a long convoy for a common purpose. The outpouring of love for this little girl was unbelieveable. The flashing lights on those vehicles spoke "Christmas" more than any other lights we saw throughout the evening. I was reminded once again that Christmas really is about love and caring. The expression of "community" as this county came together for the express purpose of fulfilling this little girl's Christmas wish and supporting her family left me feeling proud to be a part of this community. And I saw the true "lights" of Christmas!