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Highlands Today

Still Getting What I Don't Deserve

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Joyce Minor

Published: November 18, 2007

All too often, in this life, we get what we don't deserve.

I don't deserve:
- To see and hear, walk and talk, think and laugh, and thus, enjoy the world around me. But I get to anyway.
- Music, art, humor, and the beauties of nature that expand and enrich my life. But I enjoy them every day.
- My education. It was not special, nor expensive: I attended public schools and universities. Yet I received a stellar education that has given me the ability to read, write and reason, and has brought me unending pleasure and opportunity.
- The good jobs that my husband and I both have, which provide sufficient income for our needs. We know what it's like to be unemployed. It's not fun. We didn't deserve it. But, in retrospect, I'm thankful for the experience, because it taught us to be grateful, sympathetic, and generous with people in need, whether they deserve it or not.

I don't deserve:
- My good health and safety and all the things it takes to stay that way. At the touch of a button I have air conditioning in summer and heat in winter; stores on every street corner stocked with safe, sanitary food; clean, drinkable water from every tap coast to coast; doctors, medicines, and hospitals right in my neighborhood; police officers and firefighters who are honest, reliable at a moment's notice, and brave beyond belief in every town across our land.
- The conveniences of modern life that our grandparents never had, and which many people around the world still do not have. Not only things like indoor plumbing, and hot running water, but also things like microwave ovens, e-mail, cell phones, credit cards, Internet access, public libraries, interstate highways … The list goes on and on.

I don't deserve:
- To have been born in the U.S.A., the land of freedom and opportunity. No matter what the political problems or state of the economy, no place on earth can compare.
- To have been born into a family of wonderful Christian people who taught me to appreciate my blessings.
- A faithful husband who still loves me and is my best friend after all these years.
- My three beautiful, healthy, intelligent children, who have now grown into terrific, well-adjusted adults. They are the lights of my life. The privilege of being their mother still humbles and awes me every day.

Finally, I don't deserve the honor and opportunity of sharing my thoughts with you each week. It is indeed a privilege, and one I will never take for granted.
I have been blessed far beyond what I deserve, and that brings me to one last thought: I don't have to deserve it, to be richly blessed. What could be more undeserved than that?

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