A Christmas Story

I have a friend who is all the best things: funny, kind, generous, smart. She has also led a medically complicated life. That's not the most important thing about her, but for this story it's a detail that I will include. 

My friend has sent me money for the last few years to do something for a charity for her. She gives me some parameters and I go to work doing whatever she said. This year she sent me $300. She told me to sponsor a foster child for Christmas with $100 and to do something amazing with the rest. The sponsoring a kid part was easy. I tried to figure out what to do with the rest with my friend in mind. What is the beat of her heart?

I spent $50 on socks for homeless people, donated to a church that I know is dear to her that does monthly brown bags of food and supplies for homeless folks. Great. Perfect. I still had $150 left. I tried to figure out what group of people is overlooked and could use a little extra. The answer to that is young adults who have aged out of foster care. The outcome for these young people is not great. The cards are stacked against them and they have no resources. So I decided to do food baskets for local emancipated youth to help stretch their food stamps and budget this month. A friend helped me organize a food collection. My plan was to use the $150 to finish up the 20 baskets the Independent Living Supervisor told me they'd need. Except the response to the food collection was absolutely outrageous. People signed up and gave tons of non-perishable foods. The baskets were breaking they were so stuffed. And I hadn't spent a penny of my friend's money. Amazing. 

I still had $150 left and Christmas was days away. A child in foster care had their Christmas wish granted, 50 homeless (more like houseless) people would have fresh, clean, dry socks, and 20 young adults had baskets of food. I can't tell you that I prayed about the rest of the money because I'm not doing much praying these days. But I know a mom of a medically complicated young adult who has had a rough go of things over the last few years. She's weathered all of the bumps and curveballs, most of which she never ever expected. And it seemed like just the right thing to give the rest to her to let her know that she and her family have not been forgotten. So I did. 

And that is a Christmas story that happened this Christmas season. Because a funny, kind, generous, smart friend of mine told me to "do something amazing" with some money. I didn't really do a whole lot, except for having big feelings about it all. But amazing things happened. 

Thank you to my friend for giving me the opportunity to see the goodness in others, and thank you to friends that helped make all those things happen.