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Counting our blessings - Thank you God
By Lynn | December 20, 2008
Today has been a day where I really can see all the many blessings God has bestowed upon Jay and I. (sorry for the length of this post)
Our church fellowship group was fortunate enough to adopt a couple of families for Christmas. One of our members made a suggestion that we find a family in the National Guard that might need some help. So through the efforts of some really outstanding people, we were able to find two families to adopt.
I would like to share what I know about them with whomever is reading this:
The first family is a family of five and the husband/father just enlisted in the National Guard. He was then laid off from his regular job - is now in basic training - and will soon be sent to join his unit. We weren’t told where that will be, but I got the feeling he will be deployed somewhere in the Middle East.
We received a very short list for their kids Christmas wish. Each childs name had one item on the list. We were able to purchase the items on the list, get each child a little something extra, a game for the family, and a gift card for food for them. The coordinator said that this family was embarrased to have to ask for help, so we were to deliver the package to her and she would get it to the family.
One of the other women in our group (Trudy) and I delivered the package to the National Guard coordinator that gave us this family. She was very excited and grateful! And we felt very good about what we had done.
We had taken a collection amongst our group based on the estimated cost for the two families and everyone very generously participated.
The second family was a very different story. This young man had been deployed in Afghanistan for two years. He returned last spring and he and his wife just had a baby 3 weeks ago. They are struggling to get on their feet. This family only had things like bottles, blankets, warm clothes, diapers and formula on their list. We were able to get them all of these things and more, including a gift card for groceries as well.
I was a little worried because the coordinator that gave us this family told me we had to deliver the package to the family ourselves. The reason I was a little concerned was that I didn’t know how they would react to us when we delivered their package. The last thing I wanted was to make this family embarrased about needing help. (Anyone who knows me knows that I am overly sensitive to other peoples feelings, enough so that it might actually be considered a fault)
So anyway, I called the family and first spoke with the wife. She didn’t have any idea that anyone had “adopted” them and I could hear a weight lifted from her voice when I told her that we wanted to deliver a package to them to help them out for Christmas. She was so grateful and kept saying that she couldn’t believe that anyone would do this for them. She asked that we deliver it to them at his mothers house. She lives way down at the foot of South Mountain in a very old neighborhood.
So, Wally and I drove down there today to get this package to them this morning. When we got to the house, they both came to the door and they both looked so young! It was hard to imagine that this young man had been overseas for two years fighting in a war that has gotten so ugly. They invited us in and gave both of us a wonderful, warm, heartfelt hug. The baby was asleep in a carrier on the floor. He was beautiful.
We thanked him for his service to our country. I asked him where he had been deployed and how long he had been back. That’s when I found out he had been in Afghanistan. He told me that he was actually gone (with training) a little over two years. He said that his brother had also been deployed but to to Iraq. He said that it was really hard because while they were gone, his mother battled breast cancer, with both of her boys overseas. There was another young man that came out at that point that looked like he may be another brother that was much younger.
He proudly showed me his brother’s graduation picture and military picture on the wall, then he pointed to a flag folded and in a case on top of the television and said that was his brother’s flag. It hit me then that his brother must have died or that flag would not have been there. We said our goodbyes, hugged (big hugs) again, sincere and grateful thank you’s, and went on our way.
What struck me was the joy that this little family so obviously displayed on their faces. Here they are, with all this happening in their family, but you could see love, joy, hope in their eyes. I always say that the eyes are the windows into our souls - I truly believe that this is the case with this family.
This little family really taught me something about blessings. We are blessed because we have God in our lives, a wonderful church, wonderful families, love for each other and others and the ability to help people, beautiful places to live, (and much more too…) - but they are also blessed because they have that love, joy and hope in their lives as well as each other, that blessed little baby and their family. I don’t even know how to describe it.
I came home and wept, not because of anything that we did to help them, but because of what they did to help me. I wish that everyone had been able to be with us.
I have truly been blessed. Thank you God.
Topics: Observations, Thoughts |