Day: June 16, 2004

A life full of blessings

By / January 24, 2013

I sometimes wonder why on earth I got handed a life so full of blessings. I came from a wonderful stable home. I have great parents. I don’t fight with my siblings. I found a soulmate and got married when I wasn’t even looking for one. I’ve had kids exactly when I wanted to and didn’t have them when I didn’t. (Yes that’s right, four kids on purpose.) I did have a couple of years needing fairly major medical intervention, but I’m beyond that now and my health is really good.

Why should I have so much when others suffer so much? A good friend and I had a conversation about this. Her life has been quite different from mine. Her belief is that there have to be people who have lives like mine so that everyone else can know what to work for. That doesn’t quite seem right to me. It doesn’t seem to even out the unfairness any. But then when was life ever fair?

What I think is that it doesn’t matter what cards you are given. What matters is what you choose to do with the cards. I’ve been dealt a really good hand. That means I have a great responsibility to give to others. Every blessing I have, I need to share. This means I need to stretch myself more. I cannot help others if I don’t know who they are or what they need.

Surviving

By / June 16, 2004 / 4 Comments

After my last three entries chronicling one unbelievable day I had a friend ask me: “How do you survive all those kids?!”

The answer is that most days aren’t like the one I’ve just described.  Most days have maybe One of those caliber of events.  Some days have none at all.  The quiet days aren’t the ones that I tell about in here because they aren’t as amusing to tell or to read about.  I don’t often tell about the times that Kiki grabs Patches and takes him out into the back yard to play quietly for an hour.  Or the times that all four kids play quietly in the sandbox without getting sand-in-the-hair.  Or the times that Kiki runs off to a friend’s house, Patches naps, and Link and Gleek play quietly with duplos while I nap.  These kinds of things happen just as frequently as the other kind, I just don’t tell about them as much.  I probably should, because those are the moments when I have time to watch my kids and love them and realize exactly why I put up with all the annoying stuff.

And then there is all the really cute stuff.  Just last night Gleek came down the stairs into the office where Howard was playing music while he worked.  She stopped on the stairs and began doing a little bobbing dance.  “I like this music!  It has dancing in it!”

I like my children.  They have Joy in them.