Your giving should go beyond just your wallet.
If you read my last piece back in August and thought to yourself, “Oh, she can’t possibly be talking about me. I’m not planning to buy a Cybertruck anytime soon and I give to at least three charities.”
You thought you got away. I’m sorry to inform you that that is, in fact, false. Maybe you’re early in your career like me and you think that you can’t possibly give to charities, or at least give enough to make a difference, given the cost of groceries and rent these days.
If you’re like me, you are also early in your marriage and don’t have children yet. My husband and I are often called DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) by our friends, with a hint of jealousy. This made us really think about what we are doing with this time and money in this season that we will never get back.
This thought led us to fill out an EOS Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) based on the work of Gino Wickman. Our main goals center on giving a certain amount of money to those in our community and a certain number of hours in various volunteer capacities. This can look like buying groceries for a family with four children when the husband gets laid off or setting up multiple monthly babysitting days so our friends can have dates without their nine-month-old.
The next question is, then: how do we imagine fitting this all in around our normal 40-hour work week plus church, small group, visiting friends and family, cleaning the house, getting groceries, claiming we’re going to the gym, and all the other tasks it takes to keep our lives running?
Sacrifice and intentionality. We did our V/TO in July and are now working on adding these things into our normal life rhythms, but the sacrifice required didn’t hit me right away.
A friend of mine is related to one of the local group leaders of YoungLives. This is an offshoot of YoungLife, an organization that seeks to help teen moms thrive. They do this through an array of tools, including mentorship, community, summer camp, and weeknight activities. They never have enough volunteers to help with their Thursday night meetings and last week they were especially short-staffed.
I was free that evening and my husband was working late so I signed up. Volunteering on a whim has never stuck with me as much as my times with YoungLives did.
We ate dinner—provided by other volunteers—with the parents and the leadership team while 15 kids ranging in age from a handful of months to a handful of years ran and crawled around the space. Those little ones couldn’t have had more fun. That was my first hint that this place was special. These kids felt safe to run around and the parents knew they’d be cared for. Every adult in that room was a part of the village raising every child.
After dinner, about 12 volunteers took the kids to their age-appropriate rooms for the remaining hour and a half. I filled in where the biggest gap was: the baby room. I know I was serving, but I was also having a great time.
One boy, about 18 months old, was overly tired. He was throwing toys and tantrums. I picked him up and we played, then rocked, until he finally fell asleep and slept soundly in my arms for the next 45 minutes until the evening was over. This sweet child was a twin and was there with his older sister, the teen mom of a two-year-old girl. Mom had the daughter and another volunteer, and I wrangled the boys out to the car.
I placed my sleeping charge in his seat and buckled him up. Once he was in and Mom was buckling the other twin, I grabbed the tiny girl who was dangerously enjoying the parking lot. Once the doorway was clear, I put her in her car seat. I swallowed around the lump in my throat and said goodbye to the mom.
Then I got in my car and cried.
The wonderfully artistic Andrew Peterson has a line in one of his songs when he muses, “The veil, it never felt so thin,” meaning the separation between heaven and earth had never seemed so minimal than in that moment. In the moment that I was crying in my car, the Garden had never felt so far, the way the world is supposed to be so distant.
I drove home thinking about how much two hours had changed my heart, changed my life. This sweet, dear child came from a home far different than mine. He’s a twin in a home with at least three toddlers. He rarely gets one-on-one attention. But I could do that. He doesn’t know I’m not rich and I’m not famous. He only knows I am the adult who rocked him to sleep singing Bible camp songs.
So no, you’re not off the hook if you haven’t bought a Cybertruck but you don’t remember the last time you gave up your creature comforts for the good of another. We can all make the veil a little thinner for someone.
