In 14 more days my youngest child will turn 14 years old. She was supposed to have spent the week of her birthday with her Aunt Sara, but due to unforeseen issues, it just was not feasible for it to happen this year. That isn't to say that she won't spend some time with her, it only means that it won't happen this summer as she had hoped.
For those of you who do not know my daughter well I am going to give you some insight as to the person that she is. You will, by the end of this, realize why this young woman amazes me more and more every single year. Yes, yes...I am biased, but that does not make me wrong in my thoughts. First a little back story.
The year 2003 is a year that I will never forget. I was living with a man named James and he had restored my faith that there were truly good men in the world. He was my best friend and he loved my daughters as if they were his own. One morning, he proposed. Later that afternoon I came home after visiting my parents and found a note on the kitchen door saying that James had been in a motorcycle accident and was in the hospital. I had to read that note four times before it clicked in my head. I got to the hospital and they took me back immediately because I was the one person he had been asking for since they life flighted him there.
He spoke for three days. Slipped into a coma on day four. He passed away twenty days after the accident. His funeral was held three days after that. September 4, 2003, is when I lost my best friend. Never mind that he was my fiance...I lost my best friend. My daughters lost their "Daddy James" and while we have moved on with life, we have not and will not fully recover.
Christmas 2003 was the first time that I was able to purchase my children Christmas gifts on my own and they were not on the Angel Tree. I don't know which child came up with the idea, but they woke up one night, opened their gifts under the tree and then tried to hide it. I found it the next morning and made them go ahead and finish opening the ones they had torn into, which was all of them. After they unwrapped them, they had to place them under the Christmas tree and look at them every day until Christmas. No touching. Just look at all the things they had. Christmas day came around and I was waiting for my girls. I had them get dressed and then put all their gifts and put them in a garbage bag and I then drove them to a shelter for women and children in need. I made my daughters donate all the toys and clothing I had purchased for them and give them to children who had absolutely NOTHING but what they had escaped out of their house with.
The following year when it came time for Britney's birthday I had asked her what she wanted. What she said was that she wanted people to give to a charity that she chose instead of buying something for her because she had everything she needed. She has done the exact same thing every year since.
This year the request was a little different. She wanted to know if I would take her to visit a Holocaust Museum. On top of that, she wants to make 10 bags filled with basic necessities like toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, soap, shampoo, food, water and possibly a gift certificate to someplace like McDonalds or Wal-Mart and pass them out to the homeless. Now, she wants to make 10 bags FOR EVERY YEAR SHE IS OLD. 140 bags of basic necessities to people who need help the most.
I challenge you to find me another teenage girl who refuses to accept anything for herself on her birthday and instead wants each of us and all of her friends to make someone else's day a little brighter.
Here is my request. If you would like to help us gather items and send them to use for these bags to be made then we will gladly accept them. OR, in honor of her birthday, do something similar yourself in YOUR town. Pay it forward people. You never know when the next person you help may be Jesus himself.
I am proud of each of our daughters. Right now, I am bursting with pride at the selflessness that is being shown now and has been shown every year since 2004. My hope is that even when I am gone that she will continue this legacy and pass it on to her own children.
God Bless each and every single one of you that read this.
