A Story of a Woman and Her Heart
What would you do if you won the lottery tonight? I’m not talking the million dollar rub off. We all know that once the tax man cometh and you pay off your debt, that will basically have disappeared. I’m talking about the big win – 100 million, 200 million, more?
I would fill my house with children. I would love them. I would clothe them, feed them, revolve around them.
That day lives only in my dreams. In fact…truth be told, I don’t play the lottery. But I’ve found a way to save a child’s life…$33 dollars at a time.
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to save everything that needed saving. A stray cat, an outcast classmate, that doll on the back of the shelf in the ripped box. After a horrible first pregnancy and a tenuous beginning to parenthood, my husband and I stepped back and decided that attempting to have a second biological child might not be the right thing to do considering the children out there who needed us as much as we needed them. But my desire to have another try at a healthy pregnancy outweighed the desire to adopt, and so our son was born.
When I began to feel that baby envy again, adoption talk once again surfaced. Only now, with two kids and one income, adopting became an impossibility. There was no money, no time, and no space in our house.
Around that time I received the result of a blood test that basically confirmed that I’m well on my way to heart disease. Suddenly it became imperative that I find that $40 odd dollars a month it would take to take care of something that needed saving…..my health.
But then I started working again. Blogging turned into freelancing and suddenly marketing entered the picture. Time at the gym turned into time at the computer, and desperate to keep me on track, my husband bought a Wii Fit that I could use during those odd hours that I had available, hours that the gym was not open. So I marched off and cancelled my membership…and freed up about $40 a month.
That’s when I heard about Compassion International on the radio.
Within days of $40 a month reappearing in my bank account, I heard about the opportunity to sponsor a child – a child whose name I would know, whose picture I could hold, who life I could change… I grabbed my cell phone and frantically called, my heart racing.
I can’t save every child. I can’t adopt every dog from the shelter or love every person in need. But with just $33 a month, I can impact the life of a young person half way around the world in a way that I may never fully comprehend.
Chances are I won’t win the lottery. And my work out sessions, well, they’re few and far between. But I’m changing the life of Meke, a young man in Ethiopia who will now attend school and find hope for his future. And somehow…that heals my heart.
To sponsor a child of your own or just learn more about Compassion International, please visit the Compassion website.