Unexpected Blessings

Our church family continues to be such a blessing to us. A few months ago our pastor asked if we would like the play set that his children had when they were younger--for free! Our kids have never had a swing set or anything like that, so of course we wanted to say yes immediately. But there are certain limitations with our family that other families may not have. Eric isn't supposed to life more than 20 pounds and his vision is very impaired--so hauling and putting together a big wooden play set was out of the question. We don't want to make people feel sorry for us, so we told the pastor that we probably didn't have the room in our yard and didn't have a truck to get it over here.

I think the pastor saw right through us and really encouraged us to take it. He said not to worry about getting it over to our house or setting it up--he'd figure something out. That is very humbling to us. Knowing how much our kids would LOVE to have it, we said thank you and began to look forward to a new (to us) play set in our little backyard!

Some guys came over last night, donating the use of their trucks and hours of their time. They ended up having to take down part of our 8 foot fence to get it in the backyard, so had to put the fence back together and the play set!

A few weeks ago another member of our church called to ask if we could be her kids' community work project. Yikes! Okay, taking the play set and accepting such amazing help to put it together was humbling, but humbling yourself to be a "charity" project is a totally new brand of humble! LOL! I heard my mom's voice in the back of my head. "Anita, don't take away someone else's blessing." I swallowed hard and told our friend from church that we'd be thankful for the help. So tomorrow a group of homeschooled 8th graders are coming to our house to sand and re-finished the play set, and work in our yard!

We are so thankful for our church family. Of course, we know we are a strong family and don't REQUIRE this help, but honestly it is nice to feel so loved and to be able to "let go" of our battle face just a bit to allow someone to bless us in this way.

Thanks Pastor John, Wendy, Ron, Billy, Doug, Ryan, Isaac, Solomon, Martin, and all the rest!

Anita