Today, my assistant and I finished cleaning two huge rooms in a local church building in the inner-City neighborhood where I hosted the oldest of my organization's children's programs.  We've been working steadily in the humidity and heat throwing away dried up paint, sparkly glue, the lists of names of many, many children who filled up six rooms a program night for many years until we reduced the membership number to an attendance goal of 20 children per session.  We threw away mismarked shoeboxes that were filled with dried markers but marked scissors and other mismarked shoeboxes filled with stickers but named glue.  (An idea a retired school teacher had to reduce the number of thefts by children wanting to take some home - never understood it, but she did.  That was enough for me.)  We found brand new recorders and the books that went with them and organized them to be used by church members for their children when we left.  Supplies for children's devotions and games to play with adults were organized on the shelves of a storage cabinet that a volunteer had made for me and the program many years ago.  Soup bowls and ladles, vegetable dishes and platters were dusted off and shelved elsewhere.  Bags and bags of modeling clay, colored sand and ribbon, wooden spoons and tiny sifters, mixing bowls and little wooden rollers we used for a pastry making project were pitched or stored for others to use when we were gone. 

As I went through what was left over from almost 27 years of a children's program, I remembered the young people who had come and gone, laughed and cried, gotten in trouble or received special awards.  I remembered the volunteers - many who are gone now - who would trudge up three flights of stairs - some with bad hips and knees to pour lemonade and serve home-baked cookies to children and back down the stairs for three flights to sit with the children in the sanctuary before heading back up for activities or out into the parking lot for games as simple and inexpensive as potato bowling.  They never complained.  They just did what they wanted to do for children who ran wild in the neighborhood back then.

When I turned in the church key to the church secretary and headed back to my own organization with my assistant, I was grateful for those years there and the many people I met and the lessons I learned.  As I type this tonight, I also remember that some of those children and I met when my own son, age 14 moved away to live with his Dad.  My heart broke then and God saw a way to keep me going and I'm grateful.

There is still much I need to do before I turn in the keys to my own organization and retire the end of this month.  Again, my son is far away from me, being swallowed up in his disease this time.  I trust that the same HP who sent children to me and me to them so many years ago will also send me exactly what I need when I turn in my keys to the organization that kept me going when I needed it to be there.  And for that, I will also be grateful.

-- Edited by grateful2be on Thursday 12th of June 2014 09:51:34 PM