You Are Amazing ~

Lately, homeschooling has been not so awesome.  Alright, it has sucked.  I've wondered why we do it. For that matter, I've wondered why we are even parents.  I'm totally unqualified.  This feeling may be due, in part, to the amount of energy a newborn requires.  I could also blame it on the time of year.  It seems never ending.  Interminable.  Desolate. 

In a funk the other day while cleaning up emails, I discovered this.  It was an email I sent to some 

friends after meeting an elderly man in the grocery store.  It cheered me up and I pray our paths cross again.  

To my daughters ~ you are amazing!  Just remember this someday when you are totally burned out 

and ready to quit your job! 

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 I was walking out of Safeway Thursday with the five youngest. An
elderly man was waving me over trying to catch us as he pushed his walker
and was holding money in his hand.  I thought, "Oh heavens, there are a
few more errands to do and the girls need to be picked up, I don't have
time to talk."  He leans down to Eric and told him that he had been
watching him be such a helper to me and that he wanted to give him a
dollar to treat his siblings. I slipped the kiddos a few more bucks and
told them to go get a bag of licorice at which point he commented that
licorice was an excellent choice.
While waiting for them to return I visited with the gentleman and this was
his story...he was 94 years old and had been married 70 years....70 years!
Isn't that awesome?!?  He was born in Butte, the second of six boys. 
When his father passed away at age 49 he and his older brother went to
work in the mines to support the family where he remained for the next
four years until he was drafted for WWII.  Following the war he went to
college on the GI bill.  When he and his wife were married in Seattle he
had $10 and she had $5.  They went to the grocery store where they picked
up some orange crates and then on to the thrift store where they bought a
pile of blankets and that was their first bed.  They had 5 sons and
daughter and he taught school in CA for 36 years.  About this time my
kiddos returned and asked him if he wanted a piece of licorice...he only ate
the black stuff so he declined since this was red, but said that for Christmas he had received
a bunch of licorice and 24 lbs of chocolate.  He mentioned that his doc
had told him to eat better but he insists that he is 94 and he'll eat what
he wants.
As we were leaving he said, "I have seen many amazing inventions in my
time...the fastest computers that can solve multiple problems in a
fraction of a second, automobiles, refrigerators, all the technology that
you see around you, but YOU are the most amazing."  I was pondering this
(actually wondering who he was talking to, as I was not feeling too
amazing!) when he concluded, "YOU can give life....ah, women are the most
amazing of all."
I feel so blessed that we did stop despite the errands still being
incomplete.  

YOU ARE AMAZING!  

I need to let it sit in my heart and embrace it!