"There's no such thing as luck!"

I've been promising the twins for most of their lives that we would go to the circus. For the past 3 years, I've assured them that this is the year! Of course, things came up and we haven't taken them to the circus yet, despite the fact that they've had Ringling Bros. tickets tucked away in their files for 11 years.

This is the year. I promised.

The problem with the tickets they have is that we had to go down to the box office to get assigned seats. I'd been putting it off and putting it off. I don't really do downtown driving by myself. But I didn't want to drag my husband down to the arena, so I decided to brave the traffic and the unknown parking situation and take the kids down myself.

104.1 the Fish, our local Christian radio station, announced they would be giving away circus tickets on Friday at noon. What better time to go since we had to go anyway? So we arrived exactly at noon and made our way through the maze of corridors, navigating past the tile layers and through the bowels of the building with the help of a construction foreman.

20 minutes late, I was sure the tickets would be gone. But when we reached the edge of a small crowd of people, they let us through to the front.

"Too many people showed up," the station representative said. "So we're having a drawing. We'll draw 3 winners every 10 minutes." I glanced at my watch. We could only stay for 2 drawings and then we'd have to go.

The 2nd name pulled from the box was Bethany's! She went forward and claimed her 4 tickets. A few minutes later, her sister was chosen to receive a free CD of her choice.

"Wow!" I said, "You guys are so lucky!"

"There's no such thing as luck," Bethany said. "It's a blessing!"

A blessing indeed. As are my children.