To any who have actually made it through this series, I thank you for your patience.  The 1637 words I had originally planned grew to 2847 before it was over.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

I have been incredibly blessed by the circumstances in my life, but ‘ideal’ would not describe the circumstances into which I was born.  Like so many of my generation, I was born to a young couple who found out they were going to be parents shortly before they got married.  They were both the first in their families to go to college and they had goals and plans that changed dramatically when I came along.

My father was the oldest of 3 boys raised in poverty by two very loving, alcoholic parents.  They were not religious people and it is entirely possible that he had not stepped foot in a church until his wedding day.  Though he was not particularly academic, he believed a college education was the key to making his future very different from his past and he was determined to finish.

My mother was the valedictorian of her high school class.  Like so many young feminists of the 60s, she looked forward to advancing her education and moving on to a successful career.  Science was her thing and she had what it would take to make it in this challenging field.  Though she was raised in a very non-religious home, she had encountered Catholicism through her grandmother and she accepted its tenets though she wasn’t particularly active in the church.

When I was born, my mother put her education on hold to care for me while my father finished his degree.  It was a tough time.  They had no grants or scholarships or loans available to them.  They had to support themselves and pay for college while juggling a baby.  My mother worked nights and took care of me during the day; my father had the opposite schedule.  During the summers they would move in with my grandparents so they could save money for the following semester.  Within a few years, my dad managed earned his degree.

It was the early 70s.  The culture was moving rapidly in the direction of hedonism.  Personal happiness was valued above duty.  Divorce was skyrocketing.  By the time I was 4, my parents’ marriage was in trouble.  I have vague memories of my mother packing me up and heading for my grandparents house 4 hours away.  I remember a few days when my dad failed to come home after work.  It would seem the handwriting was on the wall – this family was falling apart.  I was destined to be shuffled back and forth between my parents like so many of my peers.

We had moved to a new town around this time.  Across the street from our house was a little church.  I was too young to remember the details but the people from that church reached out to the new family across the street and my life would take a dramatic turn for the better because of it.  My parents were both saved during the year or so we lived in that little town.  Though it would not be easy, their marriage would stand the test of time.

I would never become the broken little girl from the broken little family like so many of my contemporaries.  I have no idea why God reached in to my family when so many others just like it went to ruin, but I can tell you this, if you were to erase that one pivotal point from the canvas of my life, the picture would as different as the world George Bailey found in “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Without God’s intervention at that exact point, there would have been no happy childhood.  The friends I hold dearest today, I would never have met in that crazy experiment we called a college.  Those fun, fulfilling years working with the men on skid row would never have happened.  The secular career I enjoyed for those 5 years would undoubtedly have been far different.  The odds that I would have spent my 30s surrounded by the 4 most beautiful children on earth are zero. 

These have truly been the most wonderful years of my life – all 34 of them.  And they were granted to me through no merit of my own, but by the grace of God to whom I am eternally grateful.