Day Four

I fell behind yesterday.  Boo!!!  I fell behind in my writing but not in counting my blessings.  Yesterday I was feeling kind of anti-social, but we had a church barbecue last night, and I felt like I should be there.  Brent’s never been one to force me to do something I really don’t want to do, so I am sure he would have let me stay home.  I thought about it, but I also realized there was no real reason for me not to go.  In the end, I had a great time!  So last night I was thankful that somewhere along the line I learned the lesson that I need to be self-disciplined and sometimes I need to do things I don’t really want to do.

I truly love our church family, so that was not it at all; I was just longing to be lazy.  We are having barbecues every other Saturday night this summer, and last night was the second.  In the end, I had such a great time watching the kids play on the bounce house and moving from person to person to get caught up on life.  Bounce houses are great babysitters!  All the kids played and squealed (out of joy) while the adults sat at tables and talked.  It is easy in the summer to lose track of people because everyone is busy and often people miss church or rush in and out without good conversation.  I was able to enjoy good fellowship and good food last night!  It was a blessing. 

Day Three

Today I am thankful for my career I have and for the countless number of children (and parents, both biological and foster/adoptive) who have had an impact on my life.  Though I am the one who is supposed to teach and help them, it is often the case that they teach and help me in even greater ways.

I was at dinner with a friend tonight (someone who is also a blessing in my life).  She had her daughter with her, a little girl who was in the foster care system, someone who could have been my client, someone who has in her short life experienced more loss than I can imagine.  Yet I watched as she sat across from us at the table eating her hamburger and making mountains (or something else in her imagination) out of her french fries, and she was happy, truly full of joy.  I am sure there are times when she feels confused and sad, but today she was perfectly content, smiling and singing as her mom and I talked.  She was more patient than I am when waiting for someone to finish a conversation so I can move on to my next activity.

Every day I am faced with children who have been abused and neglected.  Some of them do not cope as well, and some of them do not have the happy adoption ending, but each of them has something to teach the rest of us about life and love and survival.  I could tell story after story, but changing names and other identifying information wears me out when I am writing.  I have learned from them how to appreciate the trials I have gone through.  None of mine compare to theirs.

James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  I have had the opportunity and privilege to do that for the past 19 years.  To me these two concepts:  looking after orphans and widows" and "keeping oneself from being polluted by the world" match each other perfectly.  In my personal experience, looking after orphans has caused me to have to seek God more, which protects me from the other.  In addition, I see what the pollution can do to a person's life and how big of an impact it has on those around the polluted person.  It's heartbreaking.

I remember my first case ever, and I wanted to mention that I learned a lot from the birth parents of the child, too.  I carried it from prevention to adoption.  I saw the heartbreak of the parents, who I believe were doing the best they could, but generations of "pollution" had damaged them to the point that they could not provide for their child.  I used to wish that I could take both the mother and child home with me.  I remember gathering the parents' psychosocial history and thinking, "No wonder."  They needed healthy parents as much as their child did.  Things are not always as they might appear.  It was eye opening.

I am thankful for what God has taught me and how God has molded me through the many people I have been able to serve over the years.  What a blessing!

Day 2 (written on 06/20)

Today is my mom’s 60^th birthday, and she is the blessing I want to count on this day.  Much of my life has been about working with children whose mothers were not available to them for one reason or another.  Just as I am not a perfect mom, neither is my mom, but she has always been there for me.  She loves me, and I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.  She wants the best for me, wants me to have more than what I deserve.  I know if she could hand me the moon, she would do it.  I am so blessed!

I am grateful for the lessons she has taught me, both by warning me about my bad choices and negative behavior and by encouraging me in the good.  She has always been my cheerleader, cheering me on to do things I wasn’t sure I was capable of or even wanted to do.

I remember my junior year of high school.  It was a tough year because I transferred schools just before that year.  I was struggling with not being accepted into the National Honor Society (I know, I’m a nerd).  I had the grades, but I was new to the school, and many of the teachers did not know me.  You had to have teacher recommendations.  I remember going home (actually to the group home where mom was subbing as house parent) the day I found out I did not make it and just lying on her bed and crying.  She was so upset for me that she wanted to call the school and fight for me.  I would not let her, but she did hug me and let me cry and cheered me on for the next year (I did make it senior year).

As much as I often complained, too, she took me on many adventures (mostly in the form of camping, which I still do not like).  I think it was through these adventures that I became courageous and headstrong.  When I was in 5^th grade I think, mom decided we needed to take a trip together.  The world was different back then, but I still cannot believe we did what we did.  We crossed over the Mexico border (just the two of us) and stayed in some small motel.  We shopped, neither one of us knowing any Spanish, went on walks, played games, and had a super time.   When I was in high school, we frequently went camping in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.  I remember filtering water in the river to drink, going on long hikes up to elevations that gave me such intense headaches, stopping at berry fields along the way and picking berries, running across snakes and other not so fun creatures.  Though I don’t like to camp, I do like hiking and reaching peaks (literally and figuratively).  I still get that same feeling of accomplishment as I remember feeling the first time I hiked to the top of a mountain.

I also think it is through my mother that I grew to love others, especially those with less than what I have.  My mom was always helping others, either foster children or homeless people or the elderly or our neighbors, whoever needed her.  I remember making too much food at Thanksgivings and Christmases and taking the food to homeless people under bridges.  Brent and I now take our children to feed and love on our friends without homes.

Mom, if you ever read this, I love you, and you are such a blessing in my life.  I could go on and on with this list, but these are the things that stand out right now.

Day One

For quite a while now, for one reason or another, I have been reminding myself to remember my blessings. Sometimes it is because I feel so incredibly blessed. Other times it is because I feel quite the opposite and need to give myself a swift kick in the rear and remember all that God does for me all the time. Each time as these thoughts go through my mind, a song I used to sing in church runs through my head, "Count your blessings; name them one by one. Count your blessings; see what God has done. Count your blessings; name them one by one. Count your many blessings; see what God has done." That is all I could remember of that song, so I decided to look it up today to see what the verses say. I think it is worthy of documenting, at least some of the lines. The first, "When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, count your many blessings; name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done." Another, "Count your many blessings; every doubt will fly, and you will be singing as the days go by." It's just so important to remember what God has done, especially in times of discouragement.

The end of Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." Sometimes life is too much, and it tries to take me down. I become weak in all the grief I experience. It is important or me to remember that my joy comes from God, and that joy from/of God is my strength. I think one way to maintain that joy is to remember the blessings. My goal is to think of blessings for 365 days. I don't know if I will actually post every day, especially once my break from school is over, but I am going to keep track in a notebook and then post when I can. When Brent and I were first married, we had a book called 14000 Things To Be Happy About. It was a pretty silly book, though I must say it's pretty impressive that someone took the time to think of all those things, even if some of them were superficial. I figure if someone can come up with 14000 things, I should certainly be able to come up with 365 blessings.

I'm going to start off tonight with something I think I take for granted, but I was reminded tonight. God blessed us with our neighborhood. Our friends, the Pelishek's, have been leading a little Bible study for the kids in their cul-de-sac. They just live down the road, so we attend. Tonight as I looked at the backs of all the kids' heads, I realized how grateful I am. On our cul-de-sac alone, we have kids galore. Next door is a rental, and God saw fit to have a family move in who has a daughter Sarah's age and a son David's age. Really? What were the chances of that? I am so thankful! They are such a nice family, too. The kids are well-behaved, and we enjoy the parents. Plus we live in a cul-de-sac! Our kids can run and play in the front, ride their skateboards, play crazy games like skateboard tag, and we don't have to worry about them getting hit by a car. Almost all of the people on the street have kids, so they are careful when they turn on the street. I love that our neighborhood is full of kids, and that our kids are a close walking distance to their friends.

Thank you, God, for our neighborhood!