Blessing

Some of my greatest blessings call me Grandma.

Today is filled with love and I barely woke up.  DH and I will be spending today celebrating blessing our beautiful little granddaughter born to our youngest son.  Our hearts our filled with love.  Sharing center stage are pictures of the latest granddaughter that joined our family this week born in Taiwan to our son and daughter-in-law that live there.  Another daughter is visiting from Ohio with family gatherings at my oldest son's home. I feel so richly blessed.  Our children are my greatest joy and our grandchildren are simply amazing.  I am thankful that I was blessed to marry a wonderful husband that we had our children.  It wasn't easy.  My children paid a heavy price for having a mom that was so hurt in childhood.  I tried to do things differently, some I succeeded and some I made my own mistakes.  I was talking with DH this morning and I remembered that as I teenager I planned to have a career and no children.  I realize now that decision was based on my fear that I would be like my mother.  I am thankful that Heavenly Father had a different plan for me and I took the chance.  I married and had wonderful children.  I am not going to say it was an easy path because that simply wasn't the case.  I will say to every abuse survivor that how you raise your children is up to you.  The horrors from childhood do NOT have to be repeated.  I resent the times I was told that "Hurt people, hurt people."  This is what I learned, every person gets hurt at sometime, what you do with that hurt and how you choose to behave is totally up to you.  You can use it as a crutch to wallow in self pity or you can learn to fight back and change your life.  I needed counseling, lots of it, to help me learn a different way to live.  It is worth the work.  Today, I am celebrating life and the joy of a lovely granddaughter.