For This We Are Grateful...

I go through their pictures from the first one I received to the last one.  They have grown before my eyes, but through pictures.  They look completely different from last year.  I have told myself since March of 2013 that they would be home the next month.  I planned our Florida trip in April around them with us.  I made sure we bought that 7 person tent for camping last Summer.  I told my best friend I would not be at her wedding.  I turned down many invitations, because our children were coming home.  Transatlantic parenting is what one of my friends calls it.  You worry, you think about them all day, you wake in the night thinking about one of them being scared or cold or lonely, and it is all you can do not to scream out, "Why?  What in the world, why?  You can walk on water, Jesus.  You can take out an entire army with one strike.  Why?"

One of my friends is there now.  She has been there two months.  She missed the last three holidays with her two children and husband back at home.  She stays were her youngest son, refusing to leave him behind.  She facetimes me with her son, and he repeats everything we say, and we laugh and he laughs, and he plays with his food when she tells him not to and he gives her this look, this I am your son and you are my mommy look and what, she is suppose to go home without him? 

So for Christmas at my aunt's house we gifted books.  I picked, One Thousand Gifts, a dare to live fully right where you are.  I read the first chapter last week, and said, um no, not my kind of book.  Depressing first chapter, I need something different.  When I woke in the middle of the night last night I picked it up again, or should I say Jesus picked it up again for me.  It is, in fact, just the book I need.  Thanksgiving is one day a year, but should be every day of the year, through everything we face.  Being thankful for everything is the only way to live the fullest life.  This is in fact a great book.  It is not an easy read.  It is a life-changing read.

Here is my new wall in our diamond room. (When Cealy was 2, she could not say dining room and called it our diamond room.)  This is our Grateful Wall.  I write down what I am thankful for each day.  I hope when I grow old I will have covered each one many times and have the fullest life written down before me.  I started awhile back when my three best friends came over for spaghetti dinner, before my leave to pick up our 3 blessings in Africa.  Our trip was canceled, but that dinner meant the world to me.  I wrote how grateful I am for them in my life.  And there it is pinned forever.  Yesterday, I wrote how grateful I am for Cealy's forgiving heart.  Sebastian bashed her over the head with his truck, and when he gave her a hug and said he was sorry, through her tears she said, "I forgive you."  For this we are grateful...