I believe in karma. In the past few months I have had someone I believed was a friend betray my trust... badly. It hurts. Not only did I have to re evaluate how I looked at someone I thought I could trust, but now she owes me a lot of money and I know that short of suing her, I will never see it. I can and will sue but geez... So I believe that someday, in someway, her bad karma will come back to haunt her and when it does, I have kind of hoped she thinks about me and the trust she betrayed...

The flip side of karma is this. I have a friend whose stepson brought home a "homeless" friend to live with them. I don't think it was for a real long time but the kicker was when the stepson moved out and the other kid had to stay because he had no where to go. The whole situation was beyond awkward and I am sure more than a little embarrassing for all involved. So my friend helped this kid get a job. He helped him get to work when he didn't have a way to get there. The kid helped around the house a bit but clearly my friend was doing more for this stranger than the stranger was doing for him. He had no idea how much more he was doing though.

After a few weeks of the kid working his grandparents agreed to let him move in with them. He was able to get a car to have his own transportation. He is now working a second job and doing well, great actually. My friend hadn't heard much from him since he moved out and he was not worried about that after all the kid was virtually a stranger and my friend had no ties to him,nor did my friend figure the kid owed him anything. The kid however had some other ideas.

Yesterday my friend's father called him to tell him that there was someone down in the fields working in his vineyard so my friend drove over to see what was going on. Turns out the kid had worked all the hours his first job allowed him for the week and it was too early to go to his second job so he went to my friend's vineyard and by the time my friend got there had set about 40 fence posts for him.

No one asked him to do that. Certainly no one expected him to do that. In the end though, the kid knows the gift he was given and has tried to pass that back and refill the well so to speak. So this has made me rethink some of my situation. I am sure someday my former friend will at some point have to reap what she has sown. I know longer care if she thinks back to the situation she has put me in...I just hope she has enough intelligence to realize what has caused the situation and at some point will decide to refill the well she has drained so she can find some balance in her life.

Talk about Independence Day... here's to growing up!