The Privilege of Giving

After a full day's work on Friday, my wife and I boarded a plane for San Jose, California, so that we'd be available on Saturday to help cook lunch and dinner for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House. We landed around 10:30 PM, and arrived at the hotel around an hour later (or around 1:30 AM from our Central time zone). By 8:30 AM, we were prepped and headed out to Palo Alto for our full day of work of helping to prepare lunch for 50 and dinner for 70.

Ronald McDonald House is a non-profit that provides housing for families of children that have acute medical needs. We talked with parents of toddlers or babies whose child received a heart transplant, kidney transplant, and other equally serious illness. These families have had their lives turned upside down as they work to save the life of their precious child and still care for their other children, their spouse, and themselves. Ronald McDonald House provides housing for them -- when available -- for $10 a day. Families may have to quit their jobs to provide the time needed to care for their child's needs. It was great to have the chance to provide them a fresh-cooked meal, joining the California Grand Council members who provided all the food, prepared and served it to families that are trying to gain a sense of normalcy in lives that have been turned upside down.

Twelve hours, including travel, were all that today cost us. The council spent a few hundred dollars and gave many more hours in preparation and work that day. Not one member was sorry they were there. Not one family failed to share their gratitude to us.

Such is the privilege of giving: it truly is in giving that we receive, and this weekend we were blest deeply. How much more, I wonder, could we do: there is still so much need! I am reminded of the nature of love: it is something that cannot be exhausted. Try it: try to give away your love to the point of depletion. It isn't possible! The more you give, the more you find you cannot give it away and empty yourself of it. I've been blest to be invited into a group of people who find giving a necessary, lifegiving activity.