How blessed are we?!?

Ok, this blog is just a little dose of reality that I am so thankful God continually places in front of me. Our small group at church, in the past 7 years (how is that possible!) we've been here, has always been a driving force in our lives and been a place of great fellowship, friendship, and spiritual growth. We've changed many times, where we grow too big to be "small group" anymore, and have "split" and become new groups on several occasions. But the core of us that have stayed together are continually blessed with diverse friends from different backgrounds that constantly remind me how blessed I am. We have young friends with kids our age, and older friends with no kids. We have friends from different cultural backgrounds and different religious backgrounds and we always learn alot from each other. But what's been on my heart lately are two moms, who are single moms in different ways. One is a single mom who is from Africa and still has family in Africa, and recently had to almost leave her daughter in Africa for an undetermined amount of time because of financial reasons. She lost her job and is afraid she will lose her home and could not afford to put her daughter in daycare but was having a hard time looking for a job and not having a place for her daughter to go. Fortunately, she brought her daughter (who is only 15 months) home with her. I've been so blessed by her and seeing how she keeps such a positive spirit about her and is doing everything she can to make a good life for herself and her little baby girl. The other mom is a single mom because her husband is on a one year tour in Iraq with the army. She has 3 chilren- 4, 2, and almost 1. She takes care of these kids day in and out by herself, and has no family support. Her mom criticizes her for taking her kids to church and calls her a bad mom, her sister is dealing with cancer, and she says she's alone all the time because her friends are all very young and a bad influence on her. I've been so blessed by her strength, and how she never complains about her life. These new friends of mine remind me how blessed I am to have a husband who works normal hours and is home almost every night and weekend, we have a house and good jobs that pay our bills easily and with some left over, and we have great friends and family support. I can't say it enough, we're so blessed and I thank God for putting people in my life so that I never forget it!