holiday thinking already

[kimblanchard]

I read a very inspirational piece on beliefnet by Gregg Easterbrook called the 50/50 holidays. My guess is that a lot of your families are like mine: every year we talk about wanting to inject the spirituality into Christmas or Hannukah or whatever our winter holiday is. And then we end up spending tons of money on presents and having a mountain under the tree. And then feeling maybe a little bit guilty about it.

What Gregg suggested in his piece is something I am going to try. For every dollar I spend on Christmas presents this year, I am going to give a dollar to charity. I am not willing to not have presents for Katie in particular; Christmas is about the children in my family and I plan on spoiling her plenty, especially this year as it will be so hard for us.

It is an act of gratitude. This has not been a great year, and yet my life is so full of blessings. I have spent most of the last seven months simply in God's hands, not sure how exactly the weeks and months are passing but at the same time actually healing a little and making progress, albeit slow progress, on many important things. And this world is full of so many who are so unfortunate.

Hopefully, this project will serve two goals. Hopefully, it will inject some of the spirituality back into the holiday season for us. Or at least reduce some of the materialism as Toys R Us sees its prices skyrocket in the next two months, at least for me. And hopefully, it will make this world a little bit better place, too. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/56/story_5656_1.html

And while I am on the topic of charity, let me put in a word for the Browns, who have done so much for us. I simply cannot imagine how different my life would be without this site. I know Becky received so much support here in the last year of her life, and for that I am so grateful. And they have never bugged us for money the way that our alma maters and churches have. So let's save them the need and send them some money here before the year is out. The tax accountant in me is timing this for the deduction, it is true, and I would remind you all to get a receipt for your own taxes.

So think about how meaningful this site is to each of us, and if you are in a place to make a contribution, do so. The costs of being online grow very quickly as our ranks swell and the number of hits increases dramatically everyday.

Besides, if they get enough money, maybe they can pay the forum moderators.

Curtis

[kimblanchard]

deleting all posts