life is beautiful

Sometimes I feel like a computer with a glitch.  There's a program that just won't load, a command that just won't compute.  How do I react to this?  How do I handle this?  What should I take from this?  Not every week brings the types of things that I have faced in these last two posts.  But if I never faced days like these, I wouldn't be able to move past those feelings and put them behind me.

I was with some friends the other day.  Good friends, the kind I'm lucky to have.  The kind who have been there for me in dark moments, the kind who have made me laugh.  And with these friends come a lot of kids.  When we all get together, it's great.  Kids run all over.  They parade by in every dress-up outfit you could imagine.  If you don't watch out, you'll get hit with a flying airplane or whacked with a plastic Jedi sword.  It's great.

Kids will be kids.  Some of the kids were goofing off, and they were joking around about another kid who wasn't there.  Really, it's no big deal.  It's part of being a kid.  Making fun of someone, then someone making fun of you.  And once you realize what the other side is like, well, you start to understand why you shouldn't do it.  When I was growing up, there was a boy everyone made fun of.  One day, I used a red marker to color on a maxi-pad, and then stuck it to his book bag as he got off the bus.  Well, the next week, when someone did it to me, it somehow wasn't so funny anymore.  I ran home from the bus and cried.  Lets just say, lesson learned.

I know that kids will make fun of Kamdyn.  But I just don't know how to put my mind in a place where I can accept that.  When Brad said, "Well, Kamdyn will just teach them that it's not ok to make fun of people who are different,"  I lost it.  Why does my little girl have to hurt so that someone else's kid can learn a lesson?  Why does my child have to be a lesson?

I can only answer that question by asking, Why not?  Why not her?  Why not us?  I don't think the thought of it will ever get any easier, but I do think that I will learn how to handle it.  And Kamdyn will to.  We will give her the confidence to know that she is worth standing up for herself, and that we love her more than words can describe.

And if I hide her from the world, there are so many things she will miss.  And if I shelter her, the world will miss out.  And she is worth sharing with the world.