Put In My Place

I mentioned that I went back to work this week. I work part time at a preschool. It's just enough money to help us over the hump as far as bills go. I wish I could stay home - we've worked it out every which way possible but it is necessary right now. Struggling through my short maternity leave proved that! But, if I have to work, I must say, I have a great situation. One of my girls is across the hall from me and the other is down the hall. I see them often throughout the day and am right there if something goes wrong. The baby goes to my mom's house. She's so great with my kids and it is a huge comfort and blessing to know they are well cared for there - probably better than at my house! I have wonderful people that I work with and for and that is very rare!

One coworker, Me Too's teacher last year, had a tragedy befall her family. Her daughter's apartment complex burned down. The good news was that her daughter and 3 grandchildren are all fine. The bad news was that they got out with only the clothes on their backs. Apparently, a 13 year old in the apartment directly above them was home, when he should have been at school, and was doing something with matches. Sounds awfully fishy to me. My coworker was telling me that the thing that broke her heart the most was how her granddaughter was just crying and so upset that all of her Princess stuff (Disney princess that is) was gone.

So, what does this have to do with putting me in my place? The minute before I walked up to this woman and heard this story, I was walking down the hall with another coworker complaining about the amount of toys we had at our house. The girls had gotten showered with gifts from their grandmother the day before...it just happened to be mostly Disney Princess stuff as their grandparents had just returned from a trip to Walt Disney World. So here I was complaining that I had to find room on the shelves for all of this new stuff and this little girl had just lost everything. Her world was completely changed in one instant while I have a very blessed life.

Part of our weekend will be spent getting up to the attic to pick through some toys for this family. We put a bunch of stuff up there to clean out the playroom for Christmas and only a few things have been requested or thought of since then so I think we can manage to give a few things away.

And, from now on, I'm going to try to focus more on our blessings than our hardships. "Try" being the operative word there!