I am sitting here trying to think of the correct words to properly express how proud I am of this sweet soul. I don't know if it's her age or just the fact that being super sensitive runs in her gene pool, but I am so thankful that she belongs to me.
I give God ALL of the credit for creating her.
I guess I need to explain. Let me start by saying that Faith has a heart for others. Especially those who are less fortunate than her. Tonight, we went on a prayer walk. This is something that I have never done before. I was not sure how it was going to go, but I will say that I was pleasently surprised by how well it went. Our missional church communtity split into a few small groups, kids included, and just walked the streets of a part of our town and prayed over it. We prayed for peace. We prayed that people would know a sense of community. We prayed for the physical and spiritual needs of the people living here. Some of the kids *ahem* (Faith) prayed for no litter. It wasn't particularly earth shattering and I am not sure it made one bit of difference to the people we were praying for, but for our little family, it made an impact. I see more of these walks in our future. Focusing on our specific area of town.
Anyway, I bring this up because as we were driving home I was telling my husband about a women that I saw today that was on Ellen. She is a principal of a school in Nevada where almost 85% of the children are either homeless, hungry, or in need of clothing, etc. She explained that almost immediately upon arriving at this school that she noticed children taking ketchup packets home. She asked other teachers why and they told her it was because they were going to make ketchup soup because so often, so many of them, never knew if they were going to eat at night. This woman took it upon herself to make those kids her mission in life so she started helping these families. She uses her own money and asks for donations and will take anything she can get. She helps them with their rent, food bills, electric & water bills, clothing, & various other needs and all she asks from the parents in return is that they give her their children. She wants them to make sure that they get their kids to school everyday so that she can give them a safe and loving environment on a level playing field so that these kids can get an education. Her hope by doing this is so that one day they will break the cycle. Her biggest motivator...their sweet faces and hugs. Also, Ellen got Target to donate a bunch of money and pledged to this woman that she would always be there to help in anyway. If you watched this, I apologize. I just felt it necessary to explain the next part of this story.
Sometimes I forget that our kids our listening when I am having conversations with my husband in the car. Maybe it's because they are watching a movie on the DVD player or maybe it's because I think they are too young to understand. All I know is that my 8 year old heard her Momma crying over this beautiful, inspirational story. I was crying to my husband telling him that I wanted to be the kind of person that saw a need and then actually did something about it. I do not want to be this selfish anymore.
Faith was listening. The ketchup packet part of the story just broke her little heart.
We got home and she asked if she could speak to me privately. She wanted to know why they didn't have any food to eat. This sweet girl wanted to do everything she could to fix it. "Mom, we need to send canned goods," she said. She just kept saying that she couldn't believe they didn't have any food to eat. I asked her to begin to pray for them. She did, but started sobbing so I had to finish. I promised her that our God sees everyone and He will not foresake them, or her for that matter. I did the best I could to explain why this is something that happens in the world. I told her that the most important thing she could do was to pray and to be thankful for her many blessings. I hope she understood. She seemed to. In the very near future I want to sit down with her and help her come up with things that she can do to be more outwardly focused. Things we can all do as a family.
As I sit here and type this it dawns on me what I want most in life for my babies. Of course, happiness is up at the top of the list, but the thing I want most for them is to not lead a selfish life. It's exhausting. I am so tired of worrying about what everyone else has that I don't. What vacations they take that we would never be able to afford. Public vs. Private schools. *Sarcasm alert* Hey, how many activities can we get our kids involved in so that we look like we have it all together? That makes you a good parent right? I don't think so.
If you are still reading this, I thank you. It was about 700 words longer than I normally type in a typical post.
I love you Faithy. I have learned so much by being your Mom. You and your sisters make me want to be better. I promise I will never stop trying.
That is all. :)
