Her Value is Greater than Diamonds

It has been a blessing in my life to be surrounded by good women. They are women who are strong, talented and funny. Some are family members, others are good friends.
I was reminded of this when I opened the mail Saturday to find a stack of photos from my friend in Georgia. She had sent photographs of her daughter, Megan. As I looked through the snapshots, smiling at the little dark-eyed beauty I was taken back to memories of how she came to be on this earth.
Megan’s mother, Kendra is one of those women who are larger than life in every way; she is tall, outgoing and stalwart. Her heart is enormous, she loves everyone, tries desperately not to gossip about anyone, and works very hard not to be judgmental.
I first met her when our children were in the church nursery together. Her second son is just a few weeks younger than my youngest son. At that time her son Dalen was still a babe in arms.
I liked her then, but I didn’t get to know her well until we were assigned to work together on a church job. Alas, we never were very faithful with our church job, but we quickly became good friends.
Kendra started a club of sort that eventually became the Ya-Ya Scrappers. At first a group of about six of us met monthly to exchange page kits. Less than a year into this project we discovered although we all loved scrapping, and we all enjoyed spending time with each other, the kit exchange had to go.
But the page exchange had served its purpose by helping me get acquainted with other people in the community.
As the Ya-Ya Scrapper group was starting to coalesce; Kendra had a fourth child, yet another boy. Since her oldest son is the same age as my oldest son, and her second child is the same age as my second boy, we served as the babysitters when she went to the hospital to give birth to the fourth, Carter.
Kendra continued on with her busy life, running a day-care center out of her home, making wedding cakes and catering the occasional party on the side, and calling every member of the Ya-Ya Scrappers every morning to check up on us and chat.
Somewhere along the way, she became pregnant again. Shortly after discovering a fifth baby was on the way her husband, who works in the airline industry, decided it would be prudent to apply for a transfer to Georgia to protect his job security.
Since he and Kendra had moved to Utah from Georgia, most of their family was still in the Atlanta area.
Sure enough, his transfer was accepted, and in January he started working out of Georgia, camping at his in-laws house while Kendra continued living in Utah with the family. Pregnant with her fifth child, she continued babysitting, raising four children, and getting the house ready for the move.
The couple had plenty of help from community and friends, but in July, days before Megan was to arrive, Kendra and her husband were packing moving vans and cleaning carpets to get ready for the move. The four children were put on an airplane and sent to stay with grandma when Kendra went in to give birth to Megan. Her husband was there for the event.
But shortly thereafter he flew to Georgia. I went to pick her up at the hospital and brought her home to my house for an hour or so until a relative came to take her home where she rested for a day or two before getting on the airplane and rejoining the rest of the family in their new home.
With friends like Kendra, its no wonder I often feel inadequate because often it is all I can do to shower, wash a load of clothes and get dinner on the table.

Kendra: If you are reading this, I can't find my disk with baby Megan photos on it. Can you copy it and send it too me please.