Heroes

My heroes don't have super powers. They don't walk on water or leap tall buildings in a single bound. They don't make millions of dollars, or run countries, or states, or cities. They don't fight wars, or lead great battles, or huge armies. They don't win MVP awards or lead their teams to championships or colossal upsets. They don't write, they don't play cards, they don't do anything that the world judges as being financially, intellectually or athletically better than anyone else.

My heroes are real life human beings with real human faults, who somehow make the lives of the people they touch each day a little bit better. Sometimes the know it, sometimes they don't. But they are not going to toot their own horn to tell you or me what wonderful people they are or things they are doing. We have to look, listen, and notice. Really they are just plain people who go out there and do what it takes to live their lives each day without trying to draw any special attention to themselves for doing so.

Yes, I have a lot of heroes. and I am going to write about one or two of them every chance I get. Sometimes it will be an individual, sometimes it will be a trait that I find to be heroic, sometimes it will be both. Today's heroes are those men and women, step mothers and step fathers, who make a child's life a little bit better. Those who give a safe home, shelter, clothing, guidance, love to children who are not of their blood for no other reason than that the child needs it. All we ever hear in the news is the bad stuff. But there are millions of heroes out there who we never read about on the front page of the paper or on CNN.

My brother married his lovely wife and she was a single mom. He adopted Ashliegh and she is his daughter, just like Rachael and Conner, her younger siblings. There is no favoritism that I have ever observed, but I notice a lot of love in that family. My brother in law has a similar situation. His first wife had a daughter prior to their getting married. Her natural father remained somewhat in the picture, but aloof, never spent a lot of time with the child. When b-i-l and first wife split up (she actually left--abandoned her children, from what I understand), oldest child stayed with b-i-l. He had no legal obligation there, and little moral obligation, but her prospects were bleak without him. He gave her a home, kept her safe, warm, and got her through to adulthood along with her two younger sisters. She is an adult and has child of her own, he is still more of a parent/ grandparent to her than either her bio mother or father.

Look around yourself. We all know someone who fits the mold. To me these are the real heroes in that they make a difference-not necessarily a perfect difference, but a positive difference in the lives of those who need them not out of obligation, but out of love.