Continuing counting the blessings of the last crazy year, the ones that seem like blessings and the blessings that don’t yet feel like gifts.  Because God is using them all to create something good, I trust it even though I don’t yet see it.

555. For getting my state day care license (long story as to why, although I’ve never used it)
556. For how the process of doing that put me through things I didn’t think I could do
557. For having every inch of my home inspected…by the fire inspector, the building inspector, and the state (yeah, every closet and drawer)
558. For being able to keep my home *that clean* when organization is certainly not my strong point
559. For the fact that after years of the kids joking “it’s not like the health department is going to inspect our kitchen” when I told them to go back and scrub down the counters, the health department DID come and inspect our kitchen.  And it passed.  Proof that God has a great sense of humor!

600.  For the first year of (part time) public school for Eldest
601. That he adjusted well, and learned a lot (but not much of it academic)
602. That he made friends and got along fine
603. That he had a few great teachers
604. And challenged a few misconceptions about homeschoolers

605. For the really hard stuff
606. For seeing first hand how addiction is a thief, a murderer, a liar
607. For the hard lesson that no matter how hard you try, you can’t fix things for someone else
608. For the understanding that I am sheltered, naive, and therefore gullible
609. For knowing this, and not changing a thing because that wasn’t what it was about, anyway

610. For all the hours on the phone, seeking help
611. For the people who work with addicts, the ones who genuinely wanted to help, who had compassion, whose hearts broke for my friend and who went the extra mile to help
612. For even those who had been where they were long enough to have lost compassion, love, and even hope.  I pray for them
613. For how my pride was broken, because I can see now where a person gets that attitude…the feeling that nothing you do will really help, that so few really escape this downward spiral and why let your heart break one more time?  Only God grants the grace to keep loving, keep trying
614. For the people I met, in waiting rooms, at meetings, in government buildings, in hospitals. The ones caught in chemical nightmares, and the ones waiting for them…collateral damage, so many of them children

615. For seeing her amazing strength, fighting to reach the surface time and time again
616. For the heartbreak…oh, the heartbreak.  I don’t understand it, God.  But I will take it
617. For how she tried, and tried, and tried again.  How many people could have been that strong?
618. For the hard conversations, and how I learned I can do and say the things I wasn’t sure I could
619. For the long drive to detox, and all of us crying. And how it seemed like the first page of a new, happier chapter in a long hard story, or maybe the last page of a hard chapter of that same story…and really, it was just a page or two somewhere in the middle.

Linking up with the gratitude community at A Holy Experience….