I spend a lot of time loving. The current focus is my baby. She needs a lot of love. She is so lovable. So darling. She smiles and has just started to chortle. Even though it’s constantly exhausting and sometimes painful, my baby is really easy to love. I miss lots of wonderful events, I can’t do many things I’d like, but..a baby with her intoxicating smell and teeny, touchable toes.
I have been reminded this weekend of a need to extend myself beyond the reaches of my rocking chair.
An acquaintance asked for help. I don’t know her well. I actually know her child better than her. He’s a darling, towheaded, toddler. I’m not geographically close and my young baby isn’t fond of car rides. I didn’t give it much thought. This person was very upset no one was able to help her. Very upset. Could I have done more?
How far would you go to help someone?
On the flip side, I was sent a text from a couple I have never met. In the text was a picture of my daughter who is on a mission. This couple had taken her out to dinner and sent my husband and I a text including a picture. I cried. It’s not that my daughter doesn’t know how to cook or take care of herself. It’s not that without them she would have been hungry or lonely. It’s not that I HAD to see a picture of her, goodness I’d just received an email and picture from her mission president a few days earlier. I know my daughter is an independent, competent adult. It’s just seeing that a stranger paid for her dinner and sent me that text was unspeakably wonderful. Tears. Someone was caring for my baby. My adult baby…but always my baby. I just wanted to wrap them up in my arms and give them a sincere and blubbering thank you.
How far would you go to help someone?
At the same time of both of these situations, a woman I know of was receiving a double lung transplant. I didn’t even know a lung transplant was possible until a few years ago. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me. Someone had lost someone close to them and signed away their organs in the midst of their grief. The number of usable organs actually delayed the lungs a bit as the medical team raced to find a match for the heart.
How far would you go to help someone?
We are all God’s children. All of us. Yet we are so wrapped up in our own lives we tend to make poor siblings. How far are we willing to go to love one another? How out of our way? How much of our schedule are we willing to rearrange? What are we willing to sacrifice? What if the person we are to love, isn’t very lovable?
We find ourselves trying to get away with more, and give less. We try to stay one more minute in bed. We say one more thing than we should on Facebook. We take offense like it’s an Olympic sport. We seek the next entertaining thing like it’s life giving water. I make excuses for myself with amazing creativity.
But how far would I go to help someone?
Helping other people can be so simple and so small. Make a little extra dinner and share. Give what you already have available. Smile. Refuse to take offense and offer what worked for you and instead…listen.
A good friend has spent the last few days being a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear and a source for chocolate or Kleenex depending on the current need. That is an incalculable gift.
To read all of Britt Kelly’s articles, please click here.
I have discovered time and again that letting the love of God work through me blesses me immeasurably. I am filled with light and joy and grace and perspective. Somehow no matter how much I try to give I come away so much happier. I am not advising letting someone else’s drama overtake you. I am not advising being walked on or taken advantage of. I am not suggesting neglecting your own responsibilities and family. I am suggesting wisdom and love unrestrained. Don’t get paralyzed by the inability to do the Great, Amazing, Big, Change the world today thing. Look around at those close to you and find a way to love them.
We have wonderful, charitable thoughts and we suppress them. We go out of our way to get the food we want or the ticket we want, but the little nagging thought to love someone? We squelch it. Why? What if we made the simple determination to never suppress a charitable thought?
Britt grew up in a family of six brothers and one sister and gained a bonus sister later. She camped in the High Sierras, canoed down the Colorado, and played volleyball at Brigham Young University. She then served a mission to South Africa.
With all of her time in the gym and the mountains and South Africa, she was totally prepared to become the mother of 2 sons and soon to be 9 daughters. By totally prepared she means willing to love them and muddle through everything else in a partially sleepless state. She is mostly successful at figuring out how to keep the baby clothed, or at least diapered, though her current toddler is challenging this skill.
She feels children naturally love to learn and didn’t want to disrupt childhood curiosity with worksheets and school bells. She loves to play in the dirt, read books, go on adventures, watch her children discover new things, and mentor her children. Her oldest child is currently at a community college and her oldest son is going to high school at a public school. She loves to follow her children in their unique paths and interests.
She loves to write because, unlike the laundry and the dishes, writing stays done. Whenever someone asks her how she does it all she wonders what in the world they think she’s doing.
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