Don't throw it away!

Remember when I said not to throw anything you have written away until that one day you may want to use it? I wrote this in 1980 and took the picture in 2012 and put it together. Now it's ready to be shared!

Blessings or Answered Prayers?

        I ran into a gentleman at church that I hadn't seen in 12 years. Upon recollecting everything about this man, brought tears to my eyes for the second time. Because I never really got to thank him fully. His name is Don. When I first moved to Boise I was without a lot of things trying to get by as a single mother. We met in church, then gained him as a customer at the hair salon. On our last encounter during our first Christmas in Boise, he had asked if I had gone Christmas shopping for the kids yet. I said not yet, I may have to do it at the last minute to see how much money I can save up if all goes well. With a smile, I shrugged and prayed inside my head that I hope to God I can give my kids a good Christmas. After more idle chit chat, I finished his haircut and he paid.
        He came back within 3 minutes and I was hoping I hadn't done anything wrong with his haircut, so I approached him at the front desk. It was then he took out his check book and wrote out a $200 check in my name and handed it to me. He said, "don't thank me, it wasn't my idea, Merry Christmas..." I was dumbfounded and started to cry and then he was gone..... I never saw him again until recently. It was my first of many blessings or shall I say an answered prayer? I hugged Don and looked at him and made sure he heard my thanks. Until this day, it was something I had never ever forgotten as well as the smiles on Christmas Eve when the kids opened their presents. 
          To be honest, God had heard my prayer and at that moment and so whispered in Don's ear that made him come back and hand me Christmas money. I know that's what happened and I'm sticking to it. God does answer prayers, you just never know how, when or from whom it will be delivered. He is amazing!

To love or be loved, that is the question....

All I ever wanted was to be loved...
But I found out that I really didn't know what it felt like to be loved or how love felt like. I knew how to love, that was easy. I'm a giver. Always have been, always will be. And when I love, I love deeply, unconditionally, loyally and without regard to the sacrifices I may incur while doing what I needed to do to make them happy. So at some point of my maturing age, I finally realized I too would like to have the same for myself. Why not? It seemed to be a logical way of thinking. It would be nice to be treated the same way I treated them! So yes, after a few failed relationships, I wanted to finally be loved.

Then it happened....
Someone loved me for who I was, how I was and would do anything for me as much as I would when I was in love. My first reaction? I ran. I didn't reciprocate and I was beside myself. I didn't know what was going on, what I was doing. Then I stopped. Had to think. I had to be absolutely sure. I had to be sure that those three words were not being tossed around blatantly. I swore I would never utter those words again unless I truly knew that the man would say it first and meant it and that I did too. After awhile, I knew that my prayers were answered but not in the way that I thought. God had given me another giver. And I had to learn to be on the receiving end. To receive graciously and to accept the kind gestures as genuine and not something misleading. Yet still, I ran when I heard those words. I was afraid of living up to his expectations of me and failing him at the end. That I would soon bore him and he would leave. I had a lot to learn about being "loved." But at this point I would never know what love was if I didn't give him the chance to show me. At the same time, I owed it to myself to finally know what love was all about, it's what I had set out to do. To Be loved.

Until this day when he says I love you, I say "I love you more, for loving me."
Since then, the question has become the answer.
I had learned to love and be loved at the same time.

LOVE, so complex, so real, so good, you gotta have it. When you get it, hang on to it.