As the day of your birth approached, I was thinking about the dreams I have had over the years for you, my first born daughter.
Dreams about how you would make the world a better place.
My first, and most grand dream was pretty basic … that you live. For those of us who have known loss before that first breath this basic sign of life becomes the grandest dream.
Actually, it is probably similar to your grandest dreams for those who you work with, as an addictions counsellor … that they might continue to have the breath of life.
I have watched you, heard you share stories from your work … stories that break my heart, leave me with questions that I later pour out in prayer. I hear these stories with ears of a momma … aching for the aching, for what they are missing in life, for the traumas that they have experienced that have led them to such destruction.
I see your heart most clearly when I hear you speak of those you work with in your day (and night) job. I hear your hopes for their futures, I sense the hints of your dreaming for them, for their lives.
And here, in your workplace … whether in your office, or on the streets of a ‘skid row’ (in the middle of the night … ), or over a coffee, or at a park, or as they are coming off a high, or as you administer Naloxone to save their lives …
YOU are making a difference in your world.
Matthew 25 tells us the parable of the sheep and the goats. It is the final parable that Jesus shares (final things said and done should be noted because … they were Jesus final attempt at telling us how to live).
“The King will say to them, `Yes! I tell you that whenever you did these things …
- filling in forms for people who need help
- finding a safe place for someone to live, to sleep
- administering Narcan, in a drive thru, to someone who is turning blue, after overdosing on an opioid … after a long day working in a drug treatment residence
- taking a kid to get the first food they’ve eaten in days
- being threatened by someone for supporting a teen girl who needed to leave a dangerous home environment
- sitting and hearing the woes of an addict, while silently suffering with your own physical pain
- hearing the stories of sexual abuse of teens by boyfriends, uncles, fathers, brothers, foster parent and on, and on, and on again
… for one of the least important of these, you did them for me!'”
You are living the dream, girl. You have breath in your lungs and you are using what you have been uniquely gifted and called to do, in a way that can change someone’s day, their life, this world.
This work you do it beyond what I had dreamed for you … but not beyond what your Creator made you fully equipped to fulfil.
I am so proud of how you love and help those who in our society are often seen as the least.
Happy birthday sweet girl.
itsawonderfilledlife 