All the luck in the world

So I spent the morning reading my friend Emily's blog. She is an amazing women I met when I started working at the American Cancer Society in the Great Lakes Division. I was immediately impressed with her in our work environment. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing and she did it very well. It never occurred to me that she would leave the American Cancer Society.

Leave she did, about a year after I met her. ACS was her first "official" job after college graduation, she new she needed to explore and find new things. Explore she did, she is now working to built new communities in Haiti and bridge gaps between the locals and other organizations that can help. Her time there seems to be amazing. She has made 6 (I think) total trip to Haiti, each one being about 4-6 weeks in length. All on a volunteer basis. This trip is different... she has been hired by church to help as an ambassador.

Her dedication to this cause and her willingness spent time away from her family and friends and give up "all the comforts of home" to help others is truly amazing to me. Every time I read her blog or speak with her when she comes home I am impressed, amazed and feel infinitely lucky to have gotten to know her, call her my friend and just plain have someone like her in my life. Her experiences and her blog never cease to ground me when I need. Just when I feel like I don't have something or want something I see pictures of kids and families who have nothing and this amazing person who gave up what she has to help them and I am humbled.

My transitions in life have introduced me to some incredible people from all different walks of life. I have been exposed to many different types of people, cultures, religions and I have enjoyed every second. I learned a lot about myself in the friends I have made and I believe that every one of them was introduced into my life for different reasons, to teach me different things and give different experiences.

It might be almost 1:00pm on a Sunday and I might have unwashed hair, be in my pj's and haven't moved out of my living room chair since I woke up, I might be having what everyone would consider a typical "lazy Sunday", but my brain has been anything but lazy. I have learned that although sometimes I don't think I do, I have a wonderful life, that although I sometimes want more, I have plenty, and that although I sometimes feel unlucky, I have all the luck in the world.  I am grateful for what I have, my friends, my family, my health, my house, my life!