Boomerang Blessings

Unexpected blessings are awesome.

A friend of mine is caring for three children, and was feeling a bit overwhelmed. So we invited the whole bunch over for dinner and encouraged the kids to play games that didn't involve any techy gadgets. The three kids (two girls are tweens, one boy is mid single digits), rolled their eyes when my kids sat down with them to play cards and board games.

The eldest girl wasn't paying attention much to the jovial chaos, playing a game or texting on her phone. But after thirty minutes, all five kids were into a hilarious bickering over the rules of one particular game, because my son was trying to change the rules in his favor- and everyone knew it- including my son.

He didn't care. He's sixteen, has Aspergers, and thrives on conflict. His grin was wider than the Mississippi River as he went toe to to with each of the kids, including the youngest boy. When the first hour was over, they were having a blast! They switched to a new game, this time it was Battleship- though all three kids were surprised that the game didn't have all the sounds and electronics that the newer versions have. 

Yes folks, we actually have games that don't require batteries. Call Guinness World Records. 

In the beginning, we were blessing my friend and her kids. In the end our kids were blessed with company, we were blessed with the sounds of laughter and kids who weren't bored, enjoying themselves. By the end of the night, everyone went home or to bed tired, but smiling. Even the youngest had been begging to come over the next day to play again. 

We invited them back two days later, and this time we made homemade french bread pizza. They had a blast playing all kinds of silly card games and spent the next four hours at our house like they were there only a few minutes. Oh there were some snarky remarks made during heated debates over the rules, but since we adults were in the next room to hear everything (and correct any bad behavior), things settled down pretty quickly and fun ensued once more.

By ministering to others, they had in turn ministered to us. Which was an unexpected but delightful boomerang blessing!