Blessed

Today is Leadership Day at our elementary. They have been planning and preparing for this day all year. Every child this year has been a part of the leadership initiative. That means that each child has had a job. I have one on the announcement team, one on the recycling team, and another is on the lunch room clean-up crew (the last one I can't remember what team they are on... I have 6 kid mama memory loss). They are teaching our kids to have a job and own it. Today principles and leaders from other schools are coming in to see if they may want to start a program like this in their schools. It has been a BIG deal! There has been new word-art going up all over the school for the last 2 weeks, about 2 months ago they gave every child a "Leader in Me" t-shirt that they were to wear today. (This t-shirt may have caused a 10 p.m. melt down for this mama as only 2 of these shirts could be found. After about an hour of angry words and searching through dressers the offending shirts were found by flashlight, tiptoeing by sleeping children ON TOP of their dressers UNDERNEATH a collection of "treasures".) In preparation for today the children's best art has been placed on display around the school.

As we walked in the door today Hope said, "Mama, you have to come in the gym and see my display!" As I walked into the gym I looked around to see very large cardboard cut outs of people like JFK, Christopher Reeve, and Abraham Lincoln. Hope lead me to hers, Helen Keller. Hope had painted it herself to look like Helen, and attached to the front was her report. She pointed out to me a misspelled word in the first paragraph, that really annoyed her, but I didn't really see the word, I saw the whole sentence.

"...the family was blessed to have a baby girl."

Do you see it? I did. The word jumped off the page at me.

blessed

I have been thinking allot lately about the way our society views children. I don't think that our society views children as a blessing. Often they are viewed as an inconvenience, or a lesser calling for women who are on their path to an amazing and successful career.

I was blessed to see that she sees children as a blessing. And through that she knows that she is a blessing to me.

Today I feel blessed. Blessed to have 6 crazy kids, who more often than not lately leave me feeling overwhelmed, and yet bring laughter and joy like I have never known. Blessed to have a school that encourages my children to become leaders. Blessed to have a God who sees me as valuable to Him.