Valerie is a 42-year-old, single, Reformed Christian lady who lives in Baltimore. She doesn't remember a time
before she knew and loved Jesus, but she does remember accepting John Calvin into her heart in March of 2000.
Valerie is a member of Christ Reformed Evangelical Church in Annapolis.
Though her career aspiration is to be a housewife, Valerie has not yet found anyone suitable who wishes to hire
her for employment in that field (or, more properly, anyone suitable has not found her), so in the meantime she
earns her daily bread working in communications -- editing, writing, print design and website management.
Mortification Allayed
So a couple months ago a single guy in our congregation moved to Seattle to get married. It being such a long distance away, no one from CREC attended the festivities. But we wanted to bless them, so I collected contributions for a group gift. Once the funds were totaled, I pored over their registry and finally settled on a few place settings of their chosen dinnerware. After taxes and postage, there was a few bucks left over, which I put on a gift card. Then Crate and Barrel, in their infinite(simally small) wisdom, shipped them separately.
I've been sweating for months. What if they got the itsy-bitsy gift card from nine households, looking for all the world as if we'd each pitched in a buck and some change? And what if something went wrong and the dishes arrived without a card?
Well, the happy couple finally made it back east to visit his family, and they worshiped with us yesterday. They of course put a much kinder spin on the situation than I had imagined. The gift card had arrived promptly, and they, knowing we couldn't be as cheap as all that, wondered if C&B had made a mistake and left off a zero or something. Finally, after the honeymoon, they got around to opening the piles of gifts that had accumulated in the pre-wedding frenzy, and there were the place settings with the note identical to the one on the gift card. Realization dawned, laughs were laughed, and all was well.
Except I'd still like to get my hands on somebody at Crate and Barrel and smack them around a bit for leaving customers in such an awkward position!
Posted by Valerie (Kyriosity) at 12:28 PM
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2 comments
2 Comments:
On August 18, 2008 11:02 PMAngiewrote... I hadn't heard that story---that's funny! I'm glad he didn't assume it was our church's way of punishing him for moving far away.
