Jackie Chan and How Lucky We Are

I watched a really interesting documentary about Jackie Chan's family. As the film states at the end, it's like watching the last 100 years of China's history. It turns out that Jackie has 2 brothers and 2 sisters that he was unaware of. His father had to abandon his two sons (the oldest is seven at the time) and escape the Japanese. Then he has to escape the communist government under Mao, so that he is unable to find or retrieve his two sons. He meets Jackie's mother, who had to abandon her two girls (18 and 12) to escape. They marry and have Jackie. At the age of 8, Jackie apprentices himself to a theater school for ten years. In the meantime, his dad and mom have followed his employer to Australia leaving Jackie in the school.

The documentary covers the rape of Nanking(sp?), and all of the other terribly sad things that have happened in China. Under Mao's Cultural Revolution, one of the older brothers has "a big mouth" and is sent to the country to be re-educated. The older brother is "square" and doesn't talk much, so he has no problems during this time. Many years later, the dad is able to locate the brothers and reunite with them. Jackie has never met them. He has met the sisters, so they were able to reunite with their mother.

Watching this made me so grateful that I was born in a country where no one has to abandon their small children and emigrate to save their lives. We are so blessed to live in the United States. We have so many rights and privileges that other countries only dream of or envy. We are blessed to be a generous country in that we try to help other countries when troubles befall them.

I think that the only thing that really endangers our freedom is abortion. I worry that God will eventually let us collapse so that we will deal with this scourge. In the meantime, I can be even more grateful that God continues to bless our country.

Okay, I'm going to try and blog daily again

My wonderful niece-in-law, has once again inspired me to try blogging. Here's a link to her blog http://narrativeheiress.blogspot.com/ I don't know how to get you to the particular post, but it is for 9/10/13. Anyway, if she can blog with twin infants and a toddler, then I can blog with just myself. I stopped blogging because I didn't feel that I had anything to say, but now I remember that I started blogging to learn how to write. Funny how I tricked myself into stopping a healthy activity!

I had pretty much given up all of the healthy activities that I had started: walking, daily mass, blogging, meetings. I had replaced these with TV. Yesterday when I was talking to my sponsor, she pointed out that I can't get going on my own, I have to have my higher power's (whom I choose to call God) help. So I asked God to help me, and I am writing in my blog and recognizing all the things I have given up. So with God's help, I'm going to try and get back in the saddle again.