The best things are priceless

By Jeff Becraft

For this past Thanksgiving, our daughter and her family came in from Texas with the two grandkids. And then our son came in Tuesday night with his kids, so we had all four grandkids on Tuesday night through Wednesday night. There are many highlights to this whole ordeal, but one of them has got to be camping out in the living room Tuesday night. Brenda and I decided that we were going to put all the Littles in the living room, and Brenda slept on the couch, and she even ordered me this kind of fold up sort of chair that would flatten out to be a bed, and that’s what I laid on on the floor.

We don’t often get to see our grandkids with them being in different states, and so this was a really special moment. After sitting them all on the couch (except Caleb… he was content down on the floor and woe to me to disturb a two-year-old who is content), I gave them my Barney Fife speech about how many bedtime stories we were going to have and that when it was time, we needed to all get some sleep because the next day was Grams’s birthday and we were going to have a big day.

After the bedtime stories that we had read them, I left the living room and walked into the kitchen. When I came back around, I go into the living room and all the Littles are in their sleeping bags (sleeping bags that Brenda had gotten for them with dinosaurs and race cars and planets and everything else).

Brenda had a machine going that she had recently gotten that broadcast this huge picture of the moon and stars and galaxies and all kinds of things up on our living room ceiling. I stood there and thought, “This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life.” There we were with the Littles sleeping in a planetarium.

After I had finished getting ready for bed and brushing my teeth and whatnot, all the Littles were asleep. I lay there on my newfangled bed and simply stared at the ceiling and thought, “How cool is this?” And I was extremely thankful.

So at this time of year, when a lot of people go out shopping looking for big deals (and I, too, went out on Friday and got a new ladder), it just goes to show that the best things in life really are priceless.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].