why am I so blessed?

I listened to a Holocaust survivor and incredible speaker at an assignment this week.

Gerda Weissmann Klein, is now in her 80s. Her family was forced to live in the basement of their home in Poland when she was 15. They stayed there three years before being separated from her parents and only brother. She never saw them again.

Klein's story brought me to tears. She talked about a childhood friend who died in her arms while in a Nazi labor camp. The 350-mile death march she was forced to do, and her liberation one day before her 21st birthday. She spoke of being sick, hungry and near death for many very long years.

What kept her going? Klein said in the darkest hours, she thought back, in her heart and in her head, to times before her family's life was forever changed. She said she could picture her family in their living room. Her father was smoking a pipe and reading the evening paper. Her mother did her needlepoint. She and her brother sat at the table doing their homework. "It was what I called then, a very boring evening at home," Klein said.

Klein continued on. "When you go home tonight, approach your home with the eyes of a hungry, sad, homeless person," she said. Go in, and be thankful for all that you have. Don't think of what is missing in your life, because everyone's life is missing something. But approach your home like a hungry, homeless person, with their eyes.

And when you are there, look around you.

Then ask yourself, "Why me? Why am I so blessed?"