In life things always have a way of working themselves out.....and usually for the best although at times it may not seem to be that way. i've had opportunities recently to reconnect with a lot of people that i haven't talked to often over the past several years or longer and have gotten to meet a few new people who have already impacted my life greatly. i've always loved trying to figure out the human mind and why people do certain things or think certain ways so it's always fun for me to sit down and have open and honest conversations with people about any subject they wish to talk about. people are quite fascinating. in one conversation someone expressed to me that they had been through a confusing time but now they knew who they were. that was an interesting concept for me because i believe that who we are constantly is changing based on who we need to be to face life. all of us go through confusing times and some of us claim we need to figure out who we are but really, you are who you are at any given time. you are who you need to be even if it can't always be who you want to be. often times in life those confusing times we go through are what really give us an opportunity to change who we are if we want to and define what will come next. everything in life is a choice. i have seen people even in the worst of circumstances choose to be happy. i've seen people who seem to have it all choose to be miserable. i've seen people so afraid of change that they let that fear hold them back from wonderful opportunities. i've seen people turn their lives completely around and become the opposite of who they were. i've learned though that whoever i am is who i need to be and it is ok for me to change that. i've gotten to watch different people working together through some of the service i have done recently. usually i have at least my youngest daughter with me whenever i do things since she does not go to school at all yet and it has been interesting for me to watch how different people respond to each other and to a young child. how many of us are guilty of wanting to get things done quickly and brushing everything else off to the side to get a task done? how many of us pass up an opportunity to do a simple act of kindness for someone else? how many of us get a little cranky if things are not working out just right or if someone gets in the way of what we are working on? and how much in life is really that important that it can't be put on hold if need be? over the past month i've gotten to spend some time helping an older couple with a service project to benifit some of the local youth that are in less than ideal situations. my job was simple......anyone could do it. as a matter of fact i showed 2 of my boys how to do it one of the days i was helping and they were able to do it. as i was working one morning the couple told me they had asked several other people if they would come and help them complete this project and everyone else had made excuses or said they didn't know how to do what needed done. they knew i knew how so they contacted me. i was happy to help but didn't know if my 2 year old would behave well enough where i needed to be working. she did well and loved going over to 'work'. she is a very curious and active girl although somewhat shy around new people. i thought perhaps her shy quality would keep her from bothering anyone while we were working but it didn't take her long before he made quick friends with the man there. he was a great example of loving and giving attention to a child. he has great grandchildren of his own and whenever my little girl would talk to him he would stop what he was doing to help her or answer her questions and give her his full attention, putting his work aside for after she was satisfied with the attention and went to do something else. as a parent if we stop and give our children our full attention any time they seem to need it we would never get anything done but how many of us fall so much into getting things done to not stop and give to the children at all. i've gotten to see this same love for the children through many of the people i have had them around over the past year or so where people will stop what they are doing and give the kids their full attention when we are around. although i may never be able to fully express to those people the impact they have had or are having on my children it is an amazing thing for me to watch. i've had another wonderful experience over the past couple weeks also and met someone who has amazed me with his willingness to help a stranger. Since losing Elliot i have visited the cemetery often. my other kids ask regularly if we can go. I haven't decided yet on what i want to do for his permanent marker but they had put a temporary marker at his grave and we had some flowers there. i've gone through the cemetery before and seen some of the temporary markers that have been there for years so i decided that i had plenty of time to decide on the perfect stone for him. i've looked at options online and from out of state and talked to some local companies about options and still haven't come up with anything that seemed just right. the mortuary had told me that i needed to have a flat marker so it was really simply a matter of what exactly i wanted put on it and who i wanted to do it. about 2 weeks ago i took the girls to the cemetery after picking up my preschooler from school. she began showing me some of the stones around his and making her own suggestions about things we could do when i was approached by a man. he introduced himself as the cemetery sexton and told me he had seen me visit often and wanted to know if i had ordered a marker yet. i explained to him that i was still deciding what i wanted to do and some of the challenges i'd run into with some of my ideas. he then explained to me that someone else had recently decided to upgrade another stone and if i would give him permission he would like to place the base they didn't want any more on Elliots plot so we would have a nice place to put our flowers. it wouldn't have a name or anything on it but we would at least have a nice place to put our flowers for him. that sounded great to me so i quickly gave permission. it was friday afternoon so he said he would put it in the next week. i asked what size we would need to get for the name marker to fit in it and he told me that where his plot is located i could do pretty much any kind of marker that i wanted rather than having to stick to the basic flat marker the mortuary had talked to me about. i was excited and checked back daily the next week to see if he had gotten a chance to put in the concrete base. the next friday i needed to leave town to attend a funeral on the other side of the state and stopped by just as we were leaving. nothing had changed. I adjusted the flowers so they would not fall over or blow away over the weekend and left town figuring it was probably a busy week and maybe he would have time to set the base next week.
my weekend went well and on the way back to town sunday afternoon the kids asked if we could stop at the cemetery on the way back to the house. it had been storming pretty bad in the morning/early afternoon so i wasn't sure how the weather would be when we got back so i agreed that if there wasn't still a horrible storm then we would stop. the weather was beautiful when we got back to town and we headed to the cemetery. i was excited and surprised with what i found there. Not only had this amazing man who i barely knew put in a base but he also had taken the time to create a very nice temporary wood marker and set it until we decide what we want to do.
I returned on monday to thank him and he apologized for not having the proper wood tools to work with and told me that his wife helped him with getting the flowers to go on each side. I think he did an amazing job....especially since we hadn't asked him to do anything and i was so grateful for the work that he put into doing something kind for a stranger. we were blessed to have a few people donate money in cards we received at the services and i have began adding to that amount to put towards whatever we decide upon when the time is right. although i still have many challenges to face in life i have been greatly blessed with a wonderful family, friends and strangers and i'm continuing to count all the little blessings.
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