Turning a Good Idea Into Action

For the past several years, I've discovered that I've been losing the thrill that I once got from anticipating and receiving gifts for my birthday and Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I have been absolutely floored with the several of the presents I've gotten in the past, but more and more I realize that it really is the thought that matters to me - I so much more appreciate a really creative gift than I do an expensive one. As I've been in the process of this realization, I've also noticed that I frequently feel bad when my family goes out of their way to get me things. While we're not as financially strapped as we were when I was growing up, none of my family members are particularly wealthy in relation to the rest of our society. If you ignore the monstrous loans that I piled up in college and grad school (which are going away, little by little...), I'm in much better shape financially than my parents and most of my siblings. And so, while I appreciate their willingness to buy me stuff, I find that I'd rather they didn't because I know that that money could be going to better, more important things.

I really hadn't done anything with these thoughts until recently, when I saw Shayna's request that people donate what they would have spent on gifts for her birthday to a charity instead. The more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. So today I decided to put that great idea into action in my own life by telling my family (and any of you who would otherwise have planned to buy me gifts) that instead of spending that money on me, I'd like them to use it in one of two ways: 1) Donate it to Opportunity International, a Christian charity with whose work I am highly impressed ( www.opportunity.org); or, 2) save the money toward a trip to come see me here in Washington (which I think is a worthy cause of its own).