So Many Miracles

It's Friday Tie Day at Logos School.  This did not bring smiles to the faces of my children this morning.  I decided it was time to sit down and think about what we have to be thankful for to keep the fact that we needed to find our ties in perspective.  It was a fruitful exercise.

As I drove to school this morning I passed many other moms.  I started to reflect on the many miracles God has done in our little community in the eleven years that we have been here.  Rick and I are still married, which, given the state of our marriage when we moved here is truly miraculous.  I passed my friend whose son was born within weeks of Karsten.  He was born hydro cephalic, and the prognosis was not good.  He was sitting in the passenger seat smiling and waving at us as we passed by.  We got out and greeted the family whose daughter was born with a tumor in the center of her brain.  She is now in my first grade PE class, and is one of the fastest runners.  We also passed my daughter's good friend who had cancer when they were in second grade.  They lost another friend to the same type of cancer, but she is now a lovely teenager and mean basketball player. 

Through the years we have shed many tears.  We have made each other many meals.  We have prayed for one another.  We have worshipped together.  We have become a very close community.  It is hard for new people coming in to understand what we have all walked through together.  Our community has been slandered on the Internet, in the newspaper, and gossiped about everywhere.  It is sort of comical when you live here, because we really don't get what all the hype is about.  We are just people.  We live together in a small town.  We go to church every Sunday.  We take our kids to school, or homeschool.  We make meals, and have coffee together.  It is really pretty mundane.

The miraculous thing is that we love one another.  We sin against each other, sometimes in terrible ways, but we also forgive.  We repent, sometimes years later, and move on.  This is no utopia.  We have walked through many valleys of the shadow of death.  We have had funerals that were very hard.  We have buried babies, as well as grandparents.  There have been hard Providences, but there has always been new life afterwards.  There have been many weddings, and more baby showers than you can possibly attend.  We have supported each other through adoptions, business failings and thrivings, blended families, military deployments, seasonal ups and downs, pretty much anything life can throw at you.

I can honestly say at the end of the day, I would rather be here than anywhere else.  These are my people.  Many of my children were born here, and this is all they know.  We were listening to the news once, and they were talking about average family sizes.  Brooke looked at me with a very confused expression, and stated flatly that the average number of children was not less than 2.  I'm pretty sure she still believes that that statistic has to be wrong.  I am thankful for all the good times and bad times that God has brought us through, ALL OF THEM.  They have made us the family that we are today.  I am glad that I am mixed up with this crazy lot of sinners in this dusty town in the Idaho panhandle.  They have taught me a lot about loving my neighbor, and the kindness of God.  I am so excited about what God has in store for us and how He will continue to work miracles in our midst.