Thank you

I'm not a sentimental person. I tell myself that but I think perhaps I am. Today over on Google+ (Google's alternative to Facebook and my favorite social network) +Susan Lewis posted a link to her blog entitled, "But I WANT to be in jail." Go read it. Seriously. Nothing else I say in here is as well written, heart-felt, powerful, or important than what you'll read on that blog post right now.

Susan works with inmates to try and help them get their lives on track and out of jail. I may have that wrong and if so I apologize. But she works with people MOST people write-off as wastes of skin, air, breath, time because they're criminals. "Lock 'em up and throw away the key!"

I know people in jail & prison. I know people who have been in and are now out and people who are currently out who I would have sworn would be in by now.

Not a day goes by, and that's not an expression, that's an honest description, when I'm not grateful for the luck I had when I drew out my parents in the Mom & Dad lottery in the sky before I was born. Seriously. I had two parents who believed I could do what I set my mind to doing. I was raised to know right from wrong and to know that I had a safe home I could come home to where there'd be food and I'd be out of the rain and I'd be safe. When I was growing up I thought that's how it was for everybody.

As an adult I see that it's not. Not even close. Kids with parents who don't love the, don't even really LIKE them, are out there and that amazes me. I get it. Being a parent is hard. But imagine for a minute how hard it'd be to be a kid without parents? I don't know how I'd have turned out if I were trying to raise myself and that's what I see a lot of out there and that's why every day I thank God my parents thought their kid's feeling safe, secure, fed, and like they were loved, was more important than whatever it is they could have done with all that time and money they spent raising three kids. I know it wasn't easy and I can never pay back what they did for us kids.

So, to my parents, thank you for making sure I felt loved, safe, and fed. Thank you for instilling in me the belief that if I could read the instructions I could probably do whatever it was the instructions were telling me to do. That self-confidence, as misguided as it is sometimes, has me tackling things I have no business tackling, and succeeding at them. I couldn't have done those things, any of them, without you and I love you.

To +Susan Lewis, thank you as well. I see these kids & ache for them, wonder what I can do, how I could help, and I TRY to help... but I don't know how... you put yourself out there and try to mend broken souls every day and you do it and I know it has to hurt when it doesn't work and hell, it probably hurts when it does to see how beaten down these kids have been... Thank you for doing it. You're making the world a better place and not just talking about it. That is amazing.