What do you GIVE when you have nothing left to give?

You give exactly what you don’t have: Money. Time. Energy. Love. Patience.
You give exactly what you need most.

Right now I need ALL of the above.
This week I gathered the last of my reserves of each and gave as though I had an abundance of each.

Money, or rather a lack of, seems to be a recurring theme with so many these days. I just wrote a check to OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting). Both The Boyfriend and I listen in the car, he downloads podcasts each week, and we find ourselves tuning in to see what’s on the tube. The gift we gave is small in comparison to the entertainment and education that OPB/NPR gives us. (Click and Clack, anyone?)

We ran to the grocery store for a couple of things and on our way out was a white-faced Golden Retriever. Our Golden has a very white face as well, so they always catch our eye. Her owner was chatting with a customer on his way in to the store. We loaded our things and The Boyfriend ran the cart back to the store. I waited in the car. And waited. And waited. Hello? Abducted? Got lost? Ran off with the checker? Seriously we were 50 feet from the front of the store, where could he have gone. When he finally got in he said, “I just paid the Salvation Army $1.00 so I could pet the dog. His name is Leon. He was a rescue. He loves people.” Well, alrighty then…away we went. Officially not my give, but interesting to me. If you have happened upon any of my older posts, you might have read about the fact that I haven’t told The Boyfriend about this challenge or my involvement. Yet, since I have been a member of Team 29 he has given things that go against his normal patterns of behavior. Although he has a very generous spirit, giving $1 to the Salvation Army wouldn’t have happened a month ago, but petting the dog would have.
(Note: Even though I am on to Round 2 I will still not share my experience with him, not “officially” anyway.)

Time is something every person who works a full-time job and has any type of responsibility outside of that job (school, home, kids, and marriage, whatever) never has enough of. The first person who can legitimately come up with a 26 hour day will be my personal hero. But the gift of TIME came in to play a few times this week. I offered transportation services to my oldest son who works retail. We live close to where he does and the mall is just a couple of miles down the road. Some of you may have heard of a little Retail Holiday called BLACK FRIDAY, if you haven’t, I want to live where you do. And in the event you have never had the opportunity to be on the “working” side of the retail counter, BLACK FRIDAY (or rather dull gray in this economic climate) is a whole lotta hype and notta lotta $$$$. And TRUST ME PEOPLE when I tell you that the supposed deals on Black Friday aren’t the best of the season…Shop the weekend prior to Christmas, retailers start slashing prices to get rid of all of that stuff, or risk having to carry it into the next fiscal year.

Ooops…sorry…sidetracked. Anyway, Son #1 had to work a mid-day shift and while the cash registers aren’t necessarily Deckin’ Corporate Pockets with a whole bunch of profits, parking is scarce. So we offered my son taxi service to and from work, on all 3 days, so he wouldn’t have to attempt to traverse the *ahem* well planned ingress/egress of this retail Mecca, and then park in the Outer 40 and either walk or “shuttle” in. As it turns out, the crowds didn’t turn out, and we only played taxi on Dull Grey Friday. As usual Son #1 was gracious in his acceptance of my offer, and we laughed about “mom and not-his-dad” hauling him to and from work…This commitment, although not needed in the quantity originally offered, of time wouldn’t have been a big deal, except I also worked on Friday. And knowing that going home from work didn’t mean the usual of staying home after work, it meant changing clothes and heading back out. Not something I normally like to do. When I’m done with the Public, I AM DONE WITH THE PUBLIC. Home means pj’s and comfy slippers. It doesn’t mean parking lots and crowded malls.

A lack of time typically manifests itself in a lack of energy. I work at warp-speed every day to get the “to-do” list down to an “if I can get to it” list and it drains me of every ounce of energy I have. Yet, each day, I dig deep, and I mean way down into the reserves that come from some mysterious place, and pull out a microscopic bit of it to expend on someone who I know needs it more than they need anything else. Lately it has been my newest employee. Of course she doesn’t know all of the answers, I don’t expect her to. Yet she will bypass an experienced rep or even my assistant and seek me out. And when she does, I patiently help her, even though my phone line is blowing up, my email has reached capacity, the report due by noon is late by 47 minutes, and my boss’s boss needs something right now! Urgent! Stat! uh huh….But I invest in each of my employees and she is worth that investment.

Thanksgiving Day and the coffee were brewed, so I set about to make 3 loaves of bread and a batch of muffins. The muffins were to share with Son #1 and The Girlfriend who were stopping by on their way out to the boys’ dad’s farm. I threw the bread in the oven for Son #2 to take with him to dinner. I knew the “other mother” was making dinner for a batch of people and carbohydrates of any kind are always in short demand! He was thrilled to take them as his offering. The bird I picked up for less than $3.00 browned up beautifully and was so juicy and flavorful it was probably better than its $20 cousin who had been inoculated with a whole bunch of unpronounceable chemicals. The Boyfriend and I enjoyed a quiet day, he watching football, me doing anything but, and shared a terrific meal. I am so thankful for the 3 men in my life. Without a doubt I am a lucky woman.

This takes us from Day 1 of Round 2 thru Day 6 (yesterday).

As I read through the stories you all leave behind I find the generous spirit is alive and well. Though you may not realize it at the time, the stories you are telling are a gift to those of us who read them. The stories have made me laugh, made my think, brought a tear to my eye, and caused me a moment of pause in which I said, “I should try that.” Your stories are big and small. You have shared your good and not-so-good moments with the world. You have stepped out from behind your own shadow and shone a bright light onto the day of another. Sometimes your giving has caused you to reach waaaayyyy down into your reserve of courage and for those times I applaud you. Sometimes the gift was swallowing that chunk of pride that gets caught in all of our throats. Sometimes your gift was just human contact, a hello or a smile. Sometimes it was a nice cash donation. The gifts of time, energy, money, love, patience, gum, books and food….all the gifts that each of you give each day are NOT insignificant. I read that in your words as well. Your own belief that what you gave wasn’t “much” or “you can’t really count that”…To that I say, OH YEAH? What if every single one of the people you touched turned around and GAVE to the next person? What would the world look like tomorrow if EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, those with means and those without, just did one nice thing, with thought, with caring, with love.

My gift for today is to tell you that I read every single story on this board. Some I comment on, some I don’t. But each one of them has touched me. Each one of them makes me want to be your friend, or your neighbor, or the person behind you in the drive-thru. I would like to be caught in the wake of your giving spirit, because it truly is infectious.

And as I fight for every ounce of anything that I have, I feel a little less weighed down because I know there are amazing people out there who are trying to BE THAT CHANGE.

So what do you give when you have nothing left to give?

You give yourself. Thank you for that gift.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.