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Saturday, February 05, 2011

January Giving

I always start with the greatest of intentions, then life gets in the way.  I sit in church on Sunday and get inspired to "do more", then I get busy with chores, kids, work, etc.

January 2011 I vowed to make a difference.  I was going to send out muffins every week to brighten someone's day.  Well I managed two and that's okay!

I sent muffins to the first person who answered my Facebook message (see below post).  Her response was priceless!
I just got some awesome muffins in the mail today. :o) Hmmmm.... was an awesome snow day surprise! You are just amazing! Thank you!
I also made a loaf of cranberry bread for a former co-worker, had to stay up late to do it but her thankfulness was so sweet, it made it all worth it.

The 3rd thing I did in January was to send letters to my Compassion girls.  I've created a template in Word that allows me to place current photos of my kids along with text on one column, leaving room for the Spanish translation on the opposite side. 

The 4th thing I did was to send a toy package to a women who's house had burned down over Christmas.  I learned of her situation through another blogger.  Here's the challenging thing, it took me THREE WEEKS to get this package assembled and mailed!  Again, as I illustrated with the muffin story below, it took more than a supreme effort to get this package mailed.

First - I had it all together by the 8th, then someone in my office disassembled the box and put everything away in a fit of cleaning!

Second - I realized the $10 gift card I had slated to send said "congratulations", whimper, I can't send that to someone who's house just burned down!!!  Back to Target 2 weeks later to exchange it.  Sigh!

Third - by the third week of the month I had blown through our entire budget for Miscellenous so I could no longer afford to ship the box.  So I returned the one toy I had bought to make room in my budget to ship the box.  :(

Finally by the end of the month I had gift card replaced, found an entire box of toys in the office (I work for a toy company), written a note, and finally shipped the box on the 31st.

Why is it so hard to do good deeds???  If it was easy would I do more of them?  Or do I need to "feel" it?

See, the last few years I've given a great deal of money to charities but I don't "feel" it.  Once it's budgeted in and sent out, I don't even notice it's gone.  It's like - once I've bought anything and paid it off I no longer "feel" the pain of buying it.  But this act of "doing" something for others that takes TIME and PLANNING - well it's making a dent in my mind.

1 comment:

Amy Sullivan said...

This was fun to read. . .kind of the follow-up to the post at my place!