Guest Post: The Year I Learned There Really Is A Santa
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Guest Post By J.Sewell Perkins
Success Coaches Institute
My daughter never missed an opportunity to take her well-prepared list to the mall and monopolize Santa until he knew everything on that list. It so happened that the Santa at the mall was the same Santa I hired each year for the holiday open house at my main store. The point is that my daughter’s entire interaction with Santa over her seven years of life had been with the same Santa.
In the season of her eighth Christmas she was exposed to the alleged wisdom of a friend’s teenage sister who, for whatever insane reason, didn’t believe Santa is real. She shared her beliefs with the two younger girls and planted seeds of doubt in their believing minds. They wanted to believe but armed with this new information decided to find out for themselves and devised a plan to do just that.
They visited the jolly ole elf and sat on his lap together with the idea that one of them would distract him with her list while the other would slip her little hand inside his coat to see if there was a pillow. The pillow would of course debunk the myth of Santa. Guess what? There was no pillow.
I shared the story with Santa, or Buck as he is known in the off-season, and we devised our own plan. My daughter and I had dinner in a little restaurant at the mall and as dinner ended and I was paying the check, she asked to go see Santa. Off she went and by the time I got there she was reading off her endless list. Buck looked at me and winked.
My daughter came tearing down the platform hollering “I think he is real; he knows my whole name.” To say she was excited would be a gross understatement. Her friend’s teenage sister continued to insist that Santa was just a fat guy in a red suit and my daughter once again began to doubt. The plan Buck and I had devised was not yet completed, however.
On Christmas eve just as my daughter was on her way to her room to begin getting ready for bed…what was that? No doubt about it; that was the sound of sleigh bells. Next we heard a hearty Ho Ho Ho and when we opened the door there stood Santa with his big, black bag full of the things on my daughter’s list and under one arm was the huge, handmade rocking horse she had requested. Santa followed us into the living room and began placing the gifts under the tree. The shocked look on my daughter’s face was representative of the state she was in. Once the presents were placed and Santa was turning to leave, my daughter reached up and took his hand as she said, “Santa, some of my friends don’t believe in you but I BELIEVE.” They hugged and he waved as he made his exit.
Yes, that was the night that I learned that Santa is real. You see, I later found out that his mother had what was believed at the time to be a massive heart attack and she had been rushed to the hospital earlier that day. He spent time with his mother but believing she was in good hands, although he was still quite concerned, he left the hospital, donned his Santa suit, applied his makeup and headed to our house. He later told me there was no way he was going to disappoint a child on Christmas Eve. More important than the gifts Santa brought that evening was the thrill for my daughter of knowing once and for all that Santa is real.
Buck, at first sight appears to be just a regular guy who works in construction during the warmer months, but he is actually one of the many Santas that walk among us every day. No, they don’t all wear red velvet suits but they are the people who give of themselves, serve where needed and spread joy wherever they can. We find them in all walks of life.
There’s no doubt about it; my Christmas gift that year was the revelation that there really is a Santa…in fact, many of them and they walk among us throughout the year unnoticed. In fact there were several of them at the hospital with Buck’s mom that Christmas eve and she lived to learn what I learned that evening… Santa is definitely real.
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As a Life and Business Development Coach for nearly two decades J.S. (as she is called) works with national and international corporations, corporate leaders and small business owners. Additionally she coaches many individuals who are seeking to change their lives for the better and realize their maximum potential.
At one point in her career she was recruited by the president of the Robbins Companies for their coaching team. On the team for only a short while she was asked to assume the position of head coach which she accepted and assumed the responsibility of coaching the coaches. Not too long after that she was chosen to coach on Tony’s hand-picked Elite Coaching Team.
Now, back in private practice, she continues to pursue her life mission which is, in her own words, “To make each life I touch better in some way for my having touched it.”
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[Note from the Proprietor: This here post is J.S.' entry in this month's What I Learned From... groupwrite project. If you'd care to join the fun, well Bubba, we'd love to have ya! Don't worry; there's still plenty of time. All you have to do is click on that cute little link there and read all about it.]
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