Loving environments

After a 15 year absence a neighbor child showed up at my parents front door. I babysat her and her brother when she was little. She spent many hours and days at my parents home. When my mother looked in her face and remembered her she cried and cried.

The most amazing thing is that she remembered everything about the family. My sister, brother and myself. Her brother had apparently stopped by last year but my parents weren’t home.

I began to tear up as my mother told me this story. I told her that it was the difference between a family and a home! My daughters friends come to my home now just to visit. They said they loved coming to my house. This makes me ecstatic. It means that I am following in the footsteps of my parents. That I have made a profound effect on these kids. On the lives of kids that may not have had the same wonderful home life that I had.

I feel so blessed to know my parents are the people I want to be and that I am also becoming just like them… wonderful loving, kind, caring parents!

Judgmental

I watched several clips today of people talking about the lower class. The poor people, the moochers, the raccoons one said. I am so distressed by the way our country is headed. One of the articles stated that 99% of America’s poor had a refrigerator as if having one is a luxury. God forbid that you have a fridge to put your food in after you buy it.

The biggest problem is that the rich and upper class have become so detached from reality that they don’t see that this is a human problem. If for some reason the “moochers” stopped working for a week, their worlds would stop. Who would cut your grass, clean your house, serve you at the restaurant you eat dinner at, ring up your groceries, collect your garbage, watch over your kids at the water park?

Every day some new person comes out ranting about how people need to stop getting a free ride and actually do something instead of wanting the upper 2% to pay more taxes. I don’t believe any of these people have even looked at the people they are asking to pay more. Many have no cars, no homes, no savings. They are living week to week not because they aren't hard workers but because they don’t make enough to save anything. If it was possible for them to switch places for a week with one of them, they would probably be singing a different tune.

Where has our humanity gone… because it definitely isn’t in the Home of the free!

Power of words

Today I saw first hand how the power of words can be both detrimental and positive. Sometimes I have to stand back and watch what is going on without interjecting as much as I may want to. Years ago before I became ill I would jump to get in the middle of an argument. I loved the debate, loved the rush from trying to prove my point. Now I have to be careful of how riled up I get for fear of having a full out flare up that will affect my entire family.

With that being said I also can see how hard it is to turn the other cheek and walk away. Sometimes things touch so close to home that it makes it difficult to forgive and forget. We are all human but what we say can make us no better than the animals we call ourselves superior to.

I wish I didn’t have to choose. I wish I didn’t have to step away. I wish there was no need to make a choice. I wish people would realize the power that what they say can have. Instead of being destructive we should be positive and make changes. Instead of being nasty, we should be uplifting.

To bad we can’t use that power to make a difference!