Thankful

Yesterday I babysat two fun and cute kids from church after I got off work at the office. It was really nice hanging out with kids and seeing their creative minds as I try to entertain them or they entertained me with telling me about their favorite activities and such. So, I had the great opportunity to watch two Veggie Tales and part of Lion King. I enjoy watching kids movie and reminiscing what it was for me growing up. I grew up as normal as possible but on the other hand, I did have an unusual childhood going to hospitals more than I can remember. Back to watching Veggie Tales, so one of the kids wanted to see the "Toy that Saved Christmas" and oh my goodness, I loved it! This little town comes to think of Christmas as getting more stuff or at least for the kid veggies to get more toys then this toy (somehow wired differently than the other toys) come to find out the true meaning of Christmas - birth of Jesus and how God loved us so much that He sent His one and only son. I think it reminded me that sometimes I get so into Christmas decorations, buying gifts or volunteering my time that I forget that it's all about Jesus. Christmas also is a time to be thankful and to give rather than to receive. I was pondering over this ideas and realize that I am so thankful for the God's gift of salvation and thankful for my family and friends. I am thankful for all the people that I encounter each day whether they are nice or mean to me. I just am thankful. I think that people shouldn't be thankful just once or twice a year but 365 days, 24/7. As for giving, I love to give, both presents and my time. I love to give encouragements and cheer people on. I wanted to be a cheerleader when I was younger but I didn't get to be in a cheer squad due to hospital stays or visit. So, in saying all this, I want to propose something that my church is doing during this Christmas time. Instead of giving presents (or at least for me :), how about donating the money toward buying something for someone in another country. For example, I really want to buy a goat for someone in Ethiopia so I think I am going to donate the money toward purchasing of a goat and tell my friend that I am giving that goat in behalf of her/his name. What a radical idea, right?! I don't need more stuff and looking around my room, I am always in the lookout for opportunity to give away my stuff that other people might find useful. So, here's the website where you can do just this: http://aoneeight.org/marketplace/ . I am thankful to be alive and see the beauty around me. I probably should have introduced myself on the first post but it's still the second so all good. Here's a personal narrative that I wrote in high school. It's not very good but I hope you find it encouraging that God can use something that is awful to make it beautiful.

Beautiful Accident
By Min Kim
I’m not glamorous or gorgeous like the girls on TV or in magazines, but I’m proud of the way I look now, even with burn scars. Most girls think appearance is everything, yet from my own experience, appearance isn’t everything. It is just a myth that people say on TV’s and in magazines. I didn’t always look the way I do with my burn scars. When I was five, before the tragic beautiful accident, I was like the other little girls, cute and perky. I wore an adorable little pigtails tied with pretty radiant ribbons on my raven black hair and wore darling little dresses like the princesses in fairy tales.
When I was five and my brother was four, my parents sent us to a private school to get ahead of the other little kids in education. The first private school was run by Buddhists and my parents didn’t find out until my brother and I prayed a Buddhist prayer. My grandfather was a pastor and both of my parents grew up in a Christian family. I can remember their shocked and startled faces when they heard the prayer. The next day, my parents enrolled us in a respectable private Christian school. Fear and nervousness ran through my mind making me less excited about going to the brand new private school. Just for the occasion, my mom bought my brother and me new clothes and shoes. I remember wearing a new long sleeved shirt, new long blue jeans and new pair of tennis shoes. On the first day of going to the new school, the weather was gloomy and windy. My brother and I had a fit and we even argued with my parents about going to the school. Little children, without doubt, always obey what their parents say and we dragged ourselves to the new school. The church ran the school and many teachers teaching at the school were members of the church. The school building had three floors that contained different classes and different teachers on each floor. Each grade had one teacher and one class. The pre-kindergarten class was on the first floor. On the second floor were the kindergarten class and first grade class. The third floor was reserved for the second and third grade class.
My first day of school was an unusual one. For some odd reason, my kindergarten teacher had the flu that day and a woman in her early twenties took her place. The substitute teacher was like a statue that was for decoration purpose and no one cared about. Everyone in the class knew each other well. I didn’t really care about being alone. I was still too young to understand the meaning of loneliness, and so to pass the time, I entertained myself with the toys in the classroom. My new classroom reminded me of my two-story dollhouse with many windows and doors. For amusement I wanted to go peep out the window, but lunchtime came along and everyone sat glued around the table. I didn’t eat much as usual and I swallowed the food one bite at a time. While eating lunch, a young boy, a little older than us came dashing into the kindergarten class and told us that there was a fire in the building. The substitute panicked immediately after hearing the news. My classmates, including myself, didn’t really comprehend what was going on. Suddenly, the substitute shut all the windows and doors in a hurry. The substitute became a bee, busying herself from one place to another trying to do many things at one time.
So what happened to my brother’s pre-kindergarten class? My brother’s real pre-kindergarten teacher was in a good mood because she had a new outfit. So, she took her pre-kindergarten class out to the playground to play.
The fires slowly crept into my kindergarten class and the substitute went insane. Then she hollered that she was getting help and escaped, knowing she would not come back. After she left, everything around me went pitch-black like a night with no moon or stars. I was afraid, and I felt like a prisoner wanting freedom. When the fire died from the building, the firemen realized that the kindergarten class was not outside. They immediately went to my kindergarten class and rescued us. Before the fire ever reached other classes, all the other grades except the kindergarten class came out of the fire safely. The fire burned down the kindergarten classroom. Of the fourteen children in the class only seven survived the fight with the fire. I’m one of the lucky seven who survived. No one really knows the main cause of the fire; yet, there are many theories on how the building caught on fire. The main theory is that a little kid in pre-kindergarten class went inside to keep warm. When he played with the stove, it blew up. But, some people claim that the young adults who used the building once were mad at the church for making the building into a private school, and so they set the building on fire.
I don’t really care who set the fire and I am not angry with anyone. I thank God for saving me from the fire and letting me live. God turned something people made terrible into something beautiful. Not many people had hope for me when I was in the hospital. I survived and showed the people around me that anything is possible through God. I woke up few days later from a long sleep like Sleeping Beauty. Everything changed in my life after the day I woke up from almost dying. Most little kids don’t go through the treatments I went through, but I did without complaining. Through this life changing accident, I realized I want to be a doctor like the doctors who treated me. I went through lots of teasing and mocking from my peers after I came out of the hospital, about six months later. The teasing and mocking didn’t hurt me emotionally, but made me stronger a person. I don’t see my burn scars as something to grieve about, but they are a reminder of a beautiful tragic accident that changed my life for the better. Beauty is only skin deep in appearance; beautiful is when someone does something beautiful for other people.

*Note: So the narratives ends here; however, my story is longer than this. God had another plan for me and being a doctor was not one. Ask me about what happen to the dream of becoming a doctor and how God has shown me that my plan was minuscule to what He has planned. Thanks for taking the time to read this narrative and hope it is an encouragement to you!