If I Won the Lottery

We can dream, can't we?
I don't play the lottery because I simply don't have money to throw away on chance.  Once or twice in my entire life, I have invested in scratch-off tickets, and once put in for the Power Ball drawing.  Once.  Still, there is always the wish, the hope, that if it can happen to other people, it could happen to me--if only I gambled.

One thing I have learned about myself through the years is that I'm not a risk-taker.  If you waved $1,000 in front of my nose and offered me double-or-nothing on some other option, I would take the money and run.  Oh well!  In spite of that, there is a huge part of me that still wishes I could somehow come into a bunch of money so I could help the people that I care for.  I don't need much, but wouldn't it feel good to help others who need more than I??

If I won the lottery, I would donate to The Salvation Army, the ASPCA, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and some aspects of my church's missions.  I would move to Washington to be near my family.  I would give generous funds to families of my acquaintance who, through no fault of their own, struggle to stay alive.  I wouldn't live lavishly.  I've never known that kind of life, and it doesn't suit me.

But here's the deal:  I don't gamble.  For that reason, I can't win the lottery.  I can only dream about a life that will never exist to me; however, I have truthfully already won the lottery.

My neighbor brings my mail to the door every single day, and takes my trash cans to the street on trash day.
My cleaning gal, just today, spent hours cleaning up the yard trash leftover from the winter's storms.
My daughter and son-in-law are taking wonderful care of my grandchildren.
My car, which is 12-years-old but only at 69,000 miles, is still going strong.
My computer still works.
My cell phone still operates because my daughter and SIL pay the freight on it.
My co-grandparents and I get along nicely, even though our children are no longer married.  (A big win for the grandkids!)
My sister is in a relationship with a fellow who cares about her.
The roof on my house doesn't leak.
I have just enough money to get me by, most months.
What more do I need?

Yeah...more money would be nice but I'm not sure it would change my life at all.  It might change the lives of others, but I think I would still be the same me.  When the end of my life comes, I will probably be like Oskar Schindler at the end of the movie Schindler's List, when he begged to know how many more lives he could have saved with a single silver medal.  How much better could I have lived?

If life must end--and it does--I want to go down with a legacy that showed I couldn't do much because I wasn't a lottery winner, but I did what I could with what I had.  Counting blessings today, of which I have many!