Proof of Something Bigger Than Us

So, there’s a kismet, coincidence, luck, God, the Goddess, or just plain unbelievable thing that has happened. To us. Our family.

Here’s the back story.

A month an a half ago, maybe two, the kids were being knuckleheads about something. They were whining…about what? I can’t tell you, but it was something like they had an Xbox instead of a Wii, or complaining about having a computer that wasn’t a laptop or some such nonsense. Honestly, the entitlement was palpable. So I decided this year would be the year we reach out and help some other kids. Being particularly partial to kids in foster care because of a lot reasons like some friends are foster parents, or adoptive parents out of foster care or because I honestly believe we’ll be foster parents one day, I decided we would support a charity I knew about called Children’s Restoration Network this year, both financially and with our hands and time.

I called them over a month ago to sign up…one way was providing gifts for kids in shelters and the foster care system. Another way was to help wrap the 7 presents per child of the over 2300+ kids they were serving and another was to deliver the gifts to a group and provide dinner or a party or something as simple as pizza and wings. We decided to do all three.

So in lieu of sending out the 200 new year’s cards this year we took that money and bought $300 worth of $25 and $10 gift cards to teenagers — the group most in need for gifts/donations. Then last week I got a call from someone in charge who said they had five smaller group homes with kids in foster care we could deliver presents and dinner to; he started naming them and I quickly chose the one closest to us and the hardest to get support for…a group home of teenage boys.

So we arrive with a couple of hundred other people (after picking up Q from a sleepover and also taking a 1 block detour and having to turn around) to wrap gifts this morning. This is how it works; you sign in and they send you to a line so you can get kids’ ages/names and their wish list. They do this by seeing how many are in your group to help and with 4 of us they gave us a small group of kids. Easy enough.

The warehouse is organized with unwrapped gifts by gender, age, and price range. There is one person who sits there to hand out $10 and $25 gift cards for the older kids who really want specific items, or higher priced items. Along one wall, sit racks of clothing by gender and size. Stacked under the clothing are boxes of new shoes.

It was impressive.

We signed in and dropped off our gift cards and went to another line to get names where a staff person joyfully hands us and envelope and directs another person to tell us what to do. They explain…each child will get 7 gifts. Two of the 7 will be a batch of 4 books and a game. The other 5 gifts will be valued in ranges of 1- 3 stars. But you know what? Teenagers want expensive stuff! And it’s hard to find what they really want, the pressure! We all got involved and the kids were great about running back and forth and retrieving and returning gifts. They verify your 7 gifts and you wrap them, label a large trash bags and put the child’s gifts, wrapped, inside the bag. The bags will be organized and volunteers will pick up and deliver them next week.

The thing about this experience that is really unbelievable? There were hundreds and hundreds of envelopes enclosed with names and wishes. HUNDREDS. There were at least 200 people there to volunteer and the staff handed me an envelope, completely random, with the names of 5 kids.

We were handed the envelope containing the names and wishes of boys in a group home. The home we were assigned to a week prior and which we had already planned to deliver  gifts and a big dinner to next week (not sure what kind of dinner yet until we speak with the group home parents).

I don’t know what the statistics are on the probability that we would get those 5 names out of 2300+, in a thousands of square foot warehouse with a couple of hundred other people. You know they don’t even hand out all the names in one day. They hold gifts back and restock the gift areas and hand out more envelopes of names over the 4 day period. I don’t know about you, but I think that is a Higher Power at work.

To freak me out. I mean completely Freak. Me. Out.

We’re taking it as a sign that we should do more. There are home requests (TV, dvd player, Playstation 3, neutral curtains) too, and we’d like to reach out to our friends and see if they’d like to help with any of those items or giving an extra gift for each of the boys. There are 5 boys between ages 13-17. We’d like to get backpacks for them with some extras…maybe spend another $50-100 on each young man. Interested in helping? I just have a few days to get everything together…so email or comment and I’ll be in touch!

Couldn’t hurt to ask and after all of the help we’ve received over the years it’s great to show the kids (who’ve benefited from much generosity) how to help other people, now that we’re able. Join us?

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