This Explains A Lot...

Sister Jane was the principal at my high school.

The Triumph is Not Mine

Every Thursday, Family& Faith Live celebrates the little victories that make life something beyond survival, that indicate the times when we come close to following Blessed Mother Teresa's mantra of doing the little things with great love.

Searching for something to say, I thought of my daughter being moved up in reading groups. I thought of my oldest son volunteering to take the bus in the morning so as to take the stress off of me this week when their dad is on a business trip. I thought of the financial aid woman who called me to let me know they were missing a paper I'd sent and to please send a new one, rather than simply discard my application for being incomplete.

Then there was the miracle of my youngest son, Paul. He has Down Syndrome as many of you know, and we just evaluated him for the upcoming year. Sometimes it seems to me as if he's listening in on the objectives and goals the teachers set for him. This week, he transferred a spoon from left to right. He also helped feed himself. He is pulling up in his crib. These were all things we were to be working on, and he has started without us.

My husband's cousin has been battling cancer for many years. She has suffered from the treatment greatly. Two days ago, she started bleeding internally. The ulcers in her intestine had ruptured. Prayers are still needed for her continuing recovery but the initial scare has passed.

So this week, there were miracles, big and small, even as there were failures and tragedies, big and small: a bad grade on a paper, fights and fits of temper, the devastation of Haiti, the madness that is politics, the tears of another mother as she struggled with her daughter's clinging at school, and fears of a friend over how out of control her life feels at the moment.

But I look at this past week, and how it has been. The Triumph was not mine; but I was blessed to witness them.

Have a Triumph to Share? Put it on your Blog, then link to Family & Faith Live, Small Successes Thursday. http://www.faithandfamilylive.com/blog/small/

Prayers for Haiti

By now you know a 7.0 earthquake shattered Haiti. Reports are coming in in dribs and drabs but the situation is grave. Early pictures show a lot of tilted and shaken buildings and indicate many injured and mass chaos.

Every once in a while, we get a nudge, a request to pray. It is a reminder that we can never pray enough. It's a funny thing about prayer. For me, when I claim I don't have the time, the day is hard, the tone is hard, the process of getting through everything is hard. Conversely, when I nag myself to make the time, even if things are difficult, they aren't hard.

Prayer doesn't always alter the situation the way we wish, but it always alters the one offering the prayer. We cannot seek God's aid or love or attention in our direct petitions and not be affected by that calling out or His answer.

In the past, I've asked for any number of things, most of them by the world's standard, probably silly. God has always answered with lavish abundance. It humbles, or it should.

We often wait to pray until life brings us a situation that pulls us to our knees. But these sorts of massive tragedies remind me that I ought to be willing to pray more often and that every day with all the people I know, is a gift and rare and precious.

What we should hope, is the mere knowledge of others suffering, is enough to bring us to our knees, and to ask, and then to listen to how we are to be of service. At times like this, prayer is not the very least we can do, it is the beginning of what we must do.

Then, if you feel called to do something more physical and fiscal in response;

http://www.crs.org

They have a special fund already set up specifically for Haiti; and they are known to be good stewards to the sick, the poor and the suffering internationally.