Today I am thankful for much.
The day started out with me taking the new pregnant teenager (whose name happens to be Ketsia- very close to my Keziah!) down to Heartline to give the Fetal Heart Rate monitor a whirl.
When we arrived, they had just had a healthy baby girl born that was only a few hours old. It is precious to see a mommy in a comfortable room with flowers and visitors and clothes and diapers for the baby. These are the kind of things that Heartline is offering women in their women’s program- just beautiful. At any rate, Beth McHoul, tired as can be from delivering a baby all night, agreed to come and listen for a baby in Ketsia’s belly.
If you haven’t read my previous posts, Ketsia has gotten multiple blows to the belly from the not-so-happy father of the baby who is essentially trying to make it go away in any way possible. She also had told us that she was six months along and had never felt the baby move at all. My mood was pensive thinking for sure that we were going to have a tragedy on our hands. After several minutes of searching with the FHR monitor, we heard the joyous gallop of the babies heart beat and momma smiled a big smile. She is homeless and currently estranged from her parents, so it is no surprise that being alone, pregnant, malnourished, dehydrated, and only 18 years old is all a bit much for her- but still she smiled- it was beautiful.
Beth gave us some prenatals and since Ketsia is coming over to the house almost every day to bead, I can make sure she takes them regularly. What a wonderful opportunity to help this woman have the healthiest baby possible, just by giving her a little food and some vitamins every day.
Some more great news…. some of you may remember my post about Jonny and Lovely’s mom. She has fully recovered, is also now a part of our beading program, and is doing beautiful work. She beams from ear to ear that she has something productive to do and hopefully in the not to distant future, she can take care of her rent and be able to buy food regularly for her three children again.
Because of the growth in our artisans program, I was so pleased to have to buy new tables today! We have far outgrown my dining room table and we will be setting the garage up as an artisans studio/classroom. My dreams are still big about having a separate house to host a school, teams that come down, and the artisans center.. but with the economy being what it is, I guess we are in close company for a while longer! There are definite benefits to this. The relationships that I am making with the women who come are priceless. The street kids who are always at our home have practicaly become my children. I once had a prophetic word spoken over me that eluded to me being surrounded by many many children. As a woman who has struggled with infertility, it always seemed an almost painful blessing to recieve that word. Today I can see God’s hand.. making me not only a mother to my biological and adoptive children, but also to the children all around me. It is a blessing beyond measure. It is what I was created for. I am thankful for it all.
