Thankful

I'm trying really hard to be thankful this holiday season for all the blessings in my life but I find myself feeling guilty.
I'm getting ready to head back to America, land of plenty and excess, and leave behind all these people in Grenada that I love.  My kids at Limes and the orphanages will still be here, living their lives exactly the same, while I'm off getting a job, furnishing a house, buying a car, eating out at restaurants, and basically being able to afford anything that I need in the future.
I am so thankful for my experience in Grenada and that I have seen how other people live.  No more keeping up with the Jones', not that Lee and I ever lived our lives like that, but even more so now we know what is important... and it's not things.

I know what you're thinking "but Kelsey you love things and your house is full of things"
yes....I may shop at Goodwill and yard sales.... I may still go through other people's trash and dumpster dive.... ok actually scratch the may, I will do these things.
But but I will never again lust over something in a store or feel envious of my friend's cool cell phone or designer purse.
That's crazy.
And remind me to re-read this post over and over again.

Keeping in touch with these kids is my #1 goal.  I can't let them forget me! haha. and not just for selfish reasons, I really want to help them.  I want to be apart of their lives.  I want to send them to college.  I want to know when they get their first job and start families.  I want to come visit in a couple years and be able to pick right back up where we left off. 

I am thankful that Lee and I came to Grenada rather than getting jobs right out of college and buying a house and starting a family and getting complacent with our lives.  I sort of like that we're up to our eyeballs in debt and are homeless.  It's shaping our character, softening our hearts, and making us lean on God all the more.
I want a baby so badly.... but I know that this waiting period is only increasing the love that I will have for a child.  I think that by knowing what it is like to want a baby and not have one will make me love and appreciate that baby when I finally get it all the more.  And I don't even mean a biological child... I don't have that crazy urge for my own baby even.  My "uterus isn't doing flip flops" as a friend once asked me. haha.  But my heart is squeezed every time I get a hug from one of the precious babies at Limes.

Happy Thanksgiving!