Count Your Blessings

Sometimes it does some good to count your blessings. I suppose you could almost say it always does good to keep them in mind and to be grateful

Anyway.

Our oldest daughter is a biological daughter. She is married. She and her husband have two children, our grandchildren.

Our other three children are all adopted.

Our oldest son is Caucasian and was born in Idaho. He was placed with us on my birthday, nine days after he was born. He turned thirty today. Happy birthday! He is unmarried.

Our youngest daughter is Korean. She was born in Seoul. She was almost 6 months old when she came to us. Not long after we got her we learned that she had cerebral palsy. As she grew older, we come to learn that she had a partial paralysis on her right side, diminished brain capacity, and epilepsy. She is unmarried.

Our youngest son is also Korean. He, too, was born in Seoul. Like our Korean daughter, he arrived in our home when he was about six months old. He is unmarried.

We love all of our children and hope the very best for them.

Korea is a country divided. There is North Korea and South Korea. North Korea is communistic and the people there are subject to a dictatorship and/or military control. Our children were not born in the North, but the South. From about 1995 to 1998 North Korea suffered a terrible famine that killed about two million of its people, about ten percent of its population. During that period, little children were sickly, emaciated, and had stick-thin bodies. To survive, people had to eat weeds, grass, and cornstalks.

They say two thirds of the world's population goes to bed hungry at night. About a quarter of the people in the world survive on less than a dollar a day.

We were so very lucky to have our children come to live with us. Yet sometimes we mope about our situation and circumstances, but, in contemplating it, it is never for a good enough reason.