Noteworthy

I am house/teenage sitting for a family this week that I have known for years and I am amazed at how their house runs.  I love it.  I almost want to take notes.  Their children are almost completely self-sufficient.  I am basically just hanging out and enjoying their company.  Oh yeah, they're pleasant to be around.  But there are two things I love best.

1. They are charitable.  They belong to an enriched community that takes care of each other's needs.  The girls' mother donates all kinds of things, money, and time to their schools.  Supplies, thank you treats to the administration and teachers, all kinds of things.  I can tell how much they have invested in their community by how well their community takes care of their children in their absence.
2. You would never know.  You can tell they are a healthy, loving family, but their health is so... normal.  They are the way family should be without seeming perfect.  Those "perfect" families usually just make me cringe, anyway.  Like I said, I have known this family for years.  I have valued them and looked up to the parents as a model for functional family building, but only since being amidst the inner workings of their daily life as a family have I seen them go way beyond happy and healthy in little ways that have huge impacts.

I am excited to someday work with a family towards health and happiness.  I am excited to raise children that I will enjoy spending time with.  I hope to teach children to become better versions of themselves each day and I look forward to watching them on days they succeed and days they struggle.  I am excited to read them the Chronicles of Narnia (I just finished the third to last book in the series) and to teach them things I have learned both in books and through life experience.  I am happy that my friends and I practice living in a community where we care for each other's needs and that we have healthy role models that do the same so that someday we can all raise families that don't strive for perfection or better-than-other-families-ness but for conquering the hurdles that come our way together and fighting for our relationships with one another.

I love that God built us for community and enabled, encouraged, and expected us to build our own around us as well.