I'm sitting on my couch, watching this video of my friends giving blankets to the street boys of Kitale, Kenya. I watched this video when it was posted in July, but watching it again today, I'm tearing-up {again}.
I really love moments like this...not specifically giving blankets to street children {though, it does rank pretty high on my list}, but moments when so little is given, but it means so much.
I think I struggle living in Orange County because my "little" doesn't often feel like it means very much. Not just mine, specifically...but when those little gifts are mixed-in with the rest of our fast-paced, buy-what-we-want, never-a-moment-of-silence lives, we miss them. I miss them. I miss when they are given to me...and I certainly miss being able to give them out.
I know that "the greatest poverty is loneliness"...and I know that loneliness captures the life of a wealthy Newport teenager whose parents are filling their hearts with possessions instead of affection just as much as it does for these homeless, blanket-less Kenyans.
Sometimes I need to watch the tangible life-change of a now warm child on a cold night because I don't always get to see the emotional life-change of a child who was dying to be heard and cared for.
1 comment:
I love that every single person in Kitale knows Steve. I am tearing up a bit myself right now...and, along with you, struggling with issues of "timing" in what I desire.
All I can offer are the words of an older, and (perhaps a tad) wiser person in your life: There really is a reason you are where you are right now. There IS a reason that you are not where you long to be.
I don't claim to know or even understand that reason...but I absolutely guarantee that you will understand it all one day.
Until then, you keep doing what you are doing by 'covering' the world you are in with love.
Your heart and passion and heart for ALL people is so very admirable, Allison.
And--because of you--there truly ARE life changes going on within the cold, lonely children of Newport Beach.
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