Letters to our children - April 2013

My sweet Liam and Lola, this month has brought many, many ups and downs.  The biggest change, is that I was let go from my full time engineering job three weeks before I was scheduled to take my Professional Engineer Exam (I wrote about in my letter last month).

Scary and unexpected, this is really a blessing and great news!  More importantly than that, I am SO happy to report even though I am officially unemployed - I stuck with it, and studied my hardest, gave that test 100% of everything I had.  It is done.  I will not know the outcome until July, but I feel so good about how it went, the outcome is inconsequential.  I am completely and entirely proud of myself.

Now, back to our big life change.  Now that the exam is over, we left your amazing daycare (or "school" as you like to call it) and you will be staying home with me.  This brings a whole other set of challenges, most of which we will discover as we go along.  Fears about money, and if I'll be good enough at keeping you engaged and entertained, and the like; but that is not what I'd like to focus on the message for the month.

I'd like to just take a few moments and tell you both about the things we've learned this past month.

1.  Our elders are our treasures.  Grandma Dora (my grandmother) came to visit when Mema and Papa came for a week before the test. She is officially a prayer warrior, and prays every morning and every night.  She has lived on this earth for over 90 years (and still going strong).  I am so in awe of her faith, and her love, I am so blessed we had a chance to live with her for a week and you two got to see it first hand :)

2.  Faith is a treasure.  Every night we say prayers for everyone we love, and extra prayers for those in our lives that need it.  Recently, we pray nightly for my cousin Mamie, who awoke from a coma after 11 days and is well on her way to recovery.  It is nothing short of a miracle.  We all did our part together to help in that.

3.  Family is a treasure.  Heartache.  Pain.  Hurt and death.  These things will always exist in the world.  But so will family, close at hand to lend a shoulder to cry on, an arm to steady our walk, or far away and close in heart with kind words of "I love you" even across the country through email.

4.  Helpers are a treasure.  Scary things happened in Boston, and Liam, you had a lot of questions because you've been to races with me and somehow you know what bombs and explosions are. But we focused all those questions around all the helpers we saw on the news: firefighters, policemen, volunteers.  In tragedy (see number 3)  somehow humanity shines and gives hope....pulling together and fighting back when fear and hopelessness try to overcome us.

5. Storms are scary.  Sometimes its the mess after the storm that is hard to deal with too.  We had so much rain and as you both said when looking downstairs; "WOW!  THERE IS A LAKE IN THE BASEMENT!" You both noticed that Mom and Dad worked as a team to clean up the mess, and you both helped with the final mopping.  Because we are family, and we work hard together to keep our house running....through ups and downs, storms and sunny skies.  Even when we had to toss out some stuff that we couldn't save, at the end of the day it is just stuff.  The stuff doesn't really matter.

What does matter, is us.  We will figure it out and weather through it all; with God, and each other.

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