Precious Gifts

When I quit my job as a principal in St. James, Mn. I took a job as a teacher in an alternative school about 30 miles from Winona in a small town. I traveled back and forth each day and that allowed me time to pray, collect my thoughts and leave my cares behind me when coming home from school. I came to appreciate a wife who loved me unconditionally and who was very patient with me while I was taking graduate classes at night, as well as writing curriculum for the new classes that I taught during the day. There were times that Anne would read my night class assignments to me on cassette tape so I could listen to them while heading to work. 

During certain times of the year I would pick flowers on the roadside either on the way to work or when returning home. I loved to give them to Anne and she would lovelingly accept them with a smile, even though some of them were filled with ants, of which I didn't notice when picking them. She would tell me, "They will look lovely on the porch!" One day when picking flowers, I came up out of the gully with a bouquet of wild flowers, I was wearing a silly grin on my face, it was then that I came face to face with a hi way patrolman checking my car out. He looked serious until he saw my flowers and then he knew that my car was not stolen or abandoned. He left me with a smile on his face, all the while I was feeling a little bit sheepish with my arm full of flowers, but that was my world, one of constant surprises. One surprise we had not expected was losing our first child.
We had been married for about a year and a half when we were going to have our first baby. Anne and myself wanted this child so badly. I would find myself singing and talking to her tummy and wanting the baby to know that we were so excited to meet him or her. But like many things in life, it was not to be. One day our child was gone and was taken by the angels. On that day our hopes were dashed and we said goodbye to our child and put it God's hands to keep until we would see it for the first time in heaven. 
We have been married for over 16 years and have two beautiful children that God has given us. We know how precious they are and how we both cannot and do not take them for granted, even for one day. What

a gift God has given to us with our two children. Over the years I have worked with so many kids who are homeless, mistreated, alone and struggling for answers in life. They too need someone to love them and make them feel not alone, accepted and needed. We need to seek God for these children and do what we can to help them so that they are not alone anymore.