“God doesn’t waste our pain.”
Heidi should know. She spent more than eight years in prison, separated from her three young children. And they were some of the most painful years of her life.
“He’s always there,” she recalls. “I held on to the promises, and he made my time behind bars productive.”
Still, being separated from her children nearly tore Heidi’s heart in two.
The kids were 9, 5, and 2 years old when their mom went to prison. Rachel, the oldest, couldn’t help but wonder if her mom even wanted to be her mother anymore. Deric and Dylan, her brothers, were still too young to understand, but that didn’t spare them from the shame of having a parent in prison.
On one particularly lonely day, the chaplain at the prison where Heidi was incarcerated told her about a program called Angel Tree. It was an opportunity to show her children how much she loved them, the chaplain explained. It would allow her to be a part of their lives at Christmas, one of the times when they needed her the most.
“The kids always remembered the message I wrote on their Angel Tree tags,” Heidi says. “Angel Tree allowed me to provide something for my kids—they knew the gifts were from me.”
But that was just the beginning.
When volunteers brought gifts for her kids that Christmas, they also helped Heidi’s children create a special gift for their mom. It was a Christmas card with each of their pictures on it.
When Heidi opened it, she broke into tears.
“The impact Angel Tree has on a parent and child’s relationship … there’s just no words,” she says, remembering that day.
That Angel Tree Christmas went a long way to help Heidi’s children understand how much they meant to her. “Angel Tree showed me that my mom was trying to be involved in my life, even if she wasn’t there,” says Rachel, now 18.
Knowing that there were people who believed in her, and that her children wanted her to be part of their lives gave Heidi a reason to work hard at becoming a new woman. She enrolled in a Bible study, and began to grow in her faith.
Now, nearly a decade later, Heidi is out of prison, staying out of trouble with the law, and enjoying a whole new relationship with her children.
Come Christmas, the entire family will participate in Angel Tree again. But this time, they will be the ones who are delivering gifts and helping to host the parties.
To learn more about Angel Tree, and how you or your church can get involved this Christmas, visit www.angeltree.org.