Live Out Loud - Adventures of a mom

It's the end of another school year and just like that, these two have completed Grade 4 and 6 respectively.  Sometimes I still speak about them as if they were in Grades 1 and 3...It's as if I want the time to freeze now and the more I want it to slow down, the faster it seems to go. I just read my kids' report cards.  I've blogged about report cards before - it is always a moment where I find myself seeing deep in my heart. Being the sentimentalist I am, I take criticism I read in my kids' report cards personally.  I instantaneously take it as a critique on the kind of mom I've been - and where I've failed.  And yet, as I sit and converse with God further, He questions me.  Why don't I take my kids' accomplishments also personally?  That is to say, why don't I give myself a pat on the shoulders when I see an A in their report cards? OK God...you have a point Indeed, this has been quite a year.  My kids have accomplished much but it is e

Once upon a time there was a girl, a young girl.  Her parents had big dreams for her so they sent her off with two small suitcases, a passport and a message:  work hard, don’t give up, don’t choose the easy way, and trust in God. Her parents didn’t have enough money to go with her, so they put her on a plane and off she went to a foreign land. The girl arrived to the foreign land.  Everything was new. The more steps she took into the new world the smaller she felt.  She couldn’t understand what people said. She didn’t understand the system. She didn’t even know what to ask.  She felt alone, helpless and soon enough, pretty stupid. Soon enough she faced lots of challenges and problems.  The reality of living in a foreign land began to sink in.  She didn’t have enough money to call home so she wrote. She wrote a lot of letters, knowing she would not hear back from the people she was writing to for at least a month or two.   But she kept writing, if anything, to