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My daughter is full of surprises!

Christmas 2006: Her gift to me was a grandchild. Mind you, it wasn't something I asked for or wanted from my 16-year-old but she gave it to me anyway.

Christmas 2007: Her gift to me was an ATTITUDE. She was still upset over the fact that I was upset overher decision to keep her baby. I tried desperately to push adoption as the best alternative. She couldn't see that I was thinking of the best interest of the child of an unwed teen.

So here we are Christmas 2008. After spending a year of repairing our feelings of hurt and anger, my daughter decided to give me a series of gifts by making her MESS -- her MESSAGE.

1) She graduated from high school ON TIME. She pulled it off even after discovering five months before graduation that she was one Math credit short and had to re-arrange her whole schedule in order to make up the Math class. She did all of this while holding down a part-time job.

2) She was determined to go to college and did what was necessary to make it happen.

3) She potty trained her son. I told her if she expected me to keep him while she was away, I wasn't going to be changing dirty diapers. Jarod was potty trained at 18-months.

The best gift of all---

She made the Dean's List during her first semester at North Carolina A&T University.

There is a blessing in every storm.