What I have chosen.

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So many times this week my heart felt like it was breaking.  Breaking for a family.  Breaking for another mama.  Breaking for my son. Breaking for other situations which never seem to get healthier.  I have rounded my wagons.  Pulled in close.  Let all the cream of good people rise to the top…let all the evil toxic people sink away.  That isn’t an easy task…as toxic or predatory people are normally the loudest… they will blare trumpets with chest puffed out….while  those folks who are the sweetest often don’t demand you.  It is a concentrated effort to say… I choose you… I will tune this deafening clanging bell out and choose you.

“I choose you”, I have said under my breath over and over.

I choose donut dates with a three year old.

I choose tea and cake with my best friend.

I choose to lay in bed longer with the man of my forever.

I choose to stop and drink in my 10year old with all her light in her eyes as she tells me how she got every single math problem right!

I choose to take my youngest to the garden to show her all the little pea shoots in a row which she planted.

I choose to be vulnerable with a group of women who would stand shoulder to shoulder with me.

I choose to let the backyard baseball game turn into hide and seek way past bedtime.

I choose to stop a busy Saturday morning to sit and make tissue paper flowers with my daughters.

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I choose to stop at the kitchen sink as Yen goes out early in the morning to try on her new sneakers.  I remember the first morning she was here..nearly 5 years ago.  I opened a new box of sneakers for her…and her eyes lit up.  Always have’n been given old hand me down shoes in the foster homes…this was a big deal.  Same as this morning she put her new sneakers on…. She went out to where our yard turns into a hay field…and she took one last look at her feet…”on your mark…get set…GO,” now in English not in Spanish.  Off like a shot she would run…freedom in her face.  Running from nothing …running in safety.

All the toxic voices a world away.

No known predators here.

We choose her…. and she chooses us.

We choose family.

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