Last Christmas, my 5-year-old daughter, Olivia, insisted on making me and my oldest daughter Emily, age 9, the most scrumptious, holiday feast for lunch. Before playing Martha Stewart in the kitchen,Olivia spent a good hour in her room setting things up, making things "Christmasey."

While Olivia was busy in her room, I took Emily aside and said to her, "Emily, whatever Olivia comes up with for us to eat, please try and be a good sport about it and eat it, OK? Olivia is giving us the best kind of gift she can give us right now and it would break her heart if we thought her food or cooking was terrible. We will eat whatever she brings us and we will do this out of love for her. Does this make sense to you, Emily?" Emily totally understood. She's the kind of person who would go out of her way to save someone's feelings from being hurt, she's so kind. "So, you want us to love Olivia the way Jesus would love her, right?" "Right, I said."

After a while, finally, we heard Olivia triumphantly say, "Here I come!" She proudly peeked her head around the corner of her room and said, "Now, keep your eyes closed! I want you to be totally surprised!" We felt a paper plate get placed on our lap and finally, with a, "1...2....3...OPEN!" Emily and I opened our eyes and saw...."the sandwich." Olivia clapped her hands and said "Dig in!" While Olivia went back down to get her own sandwich, Emily and I quickly opened up the two white pieces of bread to see what was in between them: two slices of cold American cheese, globs and globs of ketchup and 6 or 7 baby carrots rolling around in it all. Quickly, Emily and I gave each other an "I'm scared" look, closed our sandwiches, and waited for Olivia to come back to her room.

"MMMM---this looks great Olivia! I gave Emily "the look" and asked how she thought her sandwich looked. "All I can is MMM, MMM, MMMMM!" said Emily. A proud Olivia perched herself in a corner of her room where she could watch the two of us eat and bask in the glow of our enjoyment. She sat and watched Emily and I both eat our ENTIRE sandwich. Oh, it was painful. But we kept those smiles on our faces. After we ate our sandwich, we both gave Olivia a big hug and thanked her for such a delicious and unique meal. Olivia was so proud. Emily and I felt happy about our good deed.

Once the happy group hug was done, Olivia was anxious to eat the obviously delicious sandwich she made for herself.Olivia chomped into her sandwich and after 10 seconds she ran to the bathroom and spit it out in the toilet, and shrieked, "Ewww! This is horrible! How could you guys eat that? That is totally disgusting!" She threw the rest of her sandwich in the trash andwent back to playing in her room, in an almost dismissive way towards Emily and me. I think she was too embarrassed and just didn't want to talk about it.

Emily and I walked out of her room and just stood there in the hallway. And do you know what happened next? We ran to the basement where we knew Olivia could not hear us and fell to the ground and just laughed and laughed and laughed till we cried. Ten minutes later, Olivia asked if I could make everyone a grilled cheese sandwich. No one laughed. Now when we talk about it, everyone laughs. Olivia finds it particularly funny that we ate the whole, nasty sandwich, but still doesn't get why we did that for her.

Someday she will...and that's all that matters.