Kind Growth......A FES Life

Americans are fat and lazy!
I once asked a seventeen year old boy from Norway the question, " What do you think of Americans?" That was the answer I was given! Taken back by such a harsh generalization of myself, and my country, I began to pay attention to the world around me. The realization that at seventeen he understood something I didn't, set the pace for a journey that altered my understanding of culture and allowed me to raise my four children in a home of acceptance. So, are Americans fat and lazy? Maybe - Maybe not, but I was! My journey spans over a decade of opening my home to foreign exchange students. Learning to accept differences while embracing past and current cultural issues. Accepting we all have miraculous parts of our cultures and we all have dark spots too. Identifying those differences for the means of equality is a kindness we all need to demonstrate.
So don't be lazy, take a walk with me in my story as a mom to 14 international kids who open my eyes to different ways toward acceptance. Laugh and enjoy the changes worldly learning created. Challenge yourself to see things through a telescope, not a microscope. Cry with me as I realized, accepting that as painful as it could get, if I was truly going to grow as a person I had to learn kind growth!
My story is a legacy left for my four biological children and my fourteen international children so they all know, I realized how fat and lazy I was, and how I intentionally choose to do something about it!
Kind Growth hurts like hell - grow anyway!