Surely Shirley.
I felt bad when she left, but we both understood.
When your on-paper budget shows you have an unallocated surplus of around $120/mo, I can’t justify paying for your eyeglasses as I’m accustomed to doing for so many dirt poor 80somethings I see each week. She’s frugal, that’s for sure. Doesn’t fritter away portions of her small income on gambling, drinking, smoking, cable channels or other luxuries. Even does her own hair and nails. I showed her how on her small social security income, she can save around a hundred bucks a month if she adopts the budget plan from our meeting today.
She walked in thinking she’d walk out with a deal to pay for a new pair of glasses. But she got much more. She left with insight and pride knowing she actually doesn’t need help but can easily buy her own glasses within the next month. Today that light bulb made all the difference in the world to Shirley, and she was more pleased to know she can be self-sufficient instead of dependent.
“Shirley, I really wanted to pay for those glasses for you,” I said as we walked down the hall from my office. She stopped me with her pointer finger. “Don’t, it’s okay. Since my husband passed, nobody has ever taken the time to show me how to budget or save in so many areas I never knew I could. I may be walking out without the glasses but you made me feel like a million bucks knowing I’ll be able to pay for them myself because of what you showed me. And where I come from, that’s how I was raised, and how I raised my own children.
We meet again one month from today to place her order online.

I didn’t have it in me to take even one more call.
I was on my 13th hour of the workweek’s final day, fueled by only a 20 minute sandwich and that flashing red light on my phone kept blinking. It was already after five when I mistook it for a stoplight from God at the intersection of a long day. I’d earned my drive home, dinner with my dog and what’s lately been more like a short winter’s naps than good nights of sleep. But it’s my weekend.

After my Monday morning hot shower and shave, sporting a topcoat the length of which was destined to rival the day ahead in this business of keeping poor people housed and fed with the lights on, the red flashing light would surely still be there for me this morning along with a dozen other calls from the unfortunate many.

502am at the office, I turned on the coffee and tended to my opening routine down the dark hall, passing my office doorway where the room was still illuminated red from the tiny light on my phone that had begged an answer all weekend but for which I’d not had the time.
Coffee in hand, I listened.
A 74 year old man had just watched his home, bed and a backseat of possessions be towed from a nearby parking lot and he needed a place to sleep for the night, some transportation, and a little hope.

There are times I question the very things I have come to believe I deserve.

This business of flashing red lights can eat you alive and spit your heart out one day with no shred of mercy in the morning.
It’s 511am and I’m on the phone trying to reach that cold old man from last week, a little forgiveness, and personal redemption for what will be another thankless day, but very strangely worth every moment.

Strokes on a canvas
Words paragraphed
A scurrying cursor
Or notes on a staff.

Truth is, you get used to it.
It takes some time, but living single and alone grows on you.
You chew your food better for lack of dinner conversation.
You sleep longer alone without a chatty someone stealing the covers, cuddling, or wanting something more.
You save money not buying silly flowers or something special for no one special for no special reason.
You learn to be self-sufficient when sick, make your own soup and get your own toilet paper.
You stop worrying about dying alone, just dying, and you gradually forget what it used to be like.
The sad silly truth is you get used to being single and alone.
It grows on you like a prolonged annihilation of everything that might have been, drawing your heart, mind and soul closer to all the good things that actually are.

I never used to be like this. I’d wake up anxious, ruled by ‘what ifs’ of the day ahead and what to do to defend against consequences of the yet unknown. It’s a miracle how things have changed.
For these many years since I first acquiesced to the fact I’m not in charge, my first waking thoughts are now less ‘what if?’ and a lot more ‘maybe today!’ What a hopeful difference in my morning outlook.
I’m not sure exactly when I pivoted from viewing time and unfolding experience as the enemy instead of my comrade and frankly, I don’t wonder much about it anymore since the view is so much better looking with life as a heavenly menu of possibilities versus dodging the anxious unknowns.
But at some divine moment, anxiety turned away to reveal anticipation, its friendlier counterpart. And mornings haven’t been the same since.
Looking expectantly to the day’s unexpected revelations sure beats blind strategizing against them as foreboding enemies.
There’s an untapped power in ‘maybe today’ thinking and a good morning is what you make of it. Try plugging into the power of expectancy and today might just be yours for the taking.

It was the first cold night of the season and from her trunk, she handed me a beautiful blue wool pea coat. “Dad, do you think you could find a home for this?” I said “Yeah honey, I’m sure it will find a good home on its own. They always do.” She replied, “I know. I’ll be waiting to hear.”
Fast forward two days.
78 year old Lettie had taken the bus several miles up Boulder Highway and walked another half mile from the bus stop in chilly 30mph winds to my office. I took her back for our appointment to help pay her utility bill since the week before, her purse had been stolen along with all her money. Still shivering, she described making the police report and in tears that dripped frozen to her cheeks, she shared how she’d stowed another $35 saved in a zippered pocket for a special Christmas gift she would have to now go without.
With her utility bill paid, I carried two bags of groceries from our pantry and asked her to follow me to the parking lot.
And just as it happened two days prior, I opened my trunk and handed her the Christmas gift she’d saved to buy herself. The blue wool pea coat fit like a glove, just like the pair I’d received from another donor that morning to accompany a moment just like this.

A couple days before the holiday is probably the worst time to ask what you can do to help.
Most charitable efforts—small or large–to assist and serve the least fortunate among us are conceived, funded, orchestrated and staffed months prior. You wouldn’t decide to throw a birthday party for your kid a couple days before the big day, would you?
Nonetheless, everyone wants a piece of that giving feeling. Nonprofits and soup kitchens, struggling all year for consistent help and support, often have too many last minute offers to place and fill during the holidays. Every parent strives to find a teaching moment for their kids between Thanksgiving and Christmas, too often walking away disappointed when there’s no room for them at the inn because everyone else also wants to use that holiday inn as their teaching tool.
You know what would help?
Choosing another month during the year for your family. How about March? Or September? Maybe sign up to serve in the heat of mid-July when the kids are out of school and can see first hand what it’s like to be homeless and hungry in the desert heat? Bring money you and the kids have saved for this experience all year long.
You can make any month Thanksgiving or Christmas for those who most need a special meal, good cheer and the hope of the season—every season.
Just an idea from someone on the inside. And not a bad one, methinks.
But hey, anytime you’re willing to spread the love is a good time, sooner or later.

You know what really scares me?
Christmas.
Not the holiday itself but that each successive year, despite its ever earlier encroachment, it takes greater effort each year to summon a holiday spirit or conjure up a bright seasonal emotion which for decades was effortless.
Before Halloween has always been unreasonably out of the question, but before Thanksgiving they say, is now increasingly expected if you’re to enjoy the full value of the magic even though 58% of the country is still well over 73 degrees.
I say it’s just a little scary when it takes this much work to get happy.
So I went to WalMart.
If anything says Christmas in October, it’s WalMart, but then I found myself shopping retail for the best buy on a holiday spirit.
Then I turned on the radio station.
If I wasn’t snapping into the season quick enough, 24/7 carols sang the tune, but then I questioned if a song alone could make such an instrumental shift.
Over the weeks, I tried several near misses, disappointing myself every turn. Baking, decorating, bad sweaters, none seemed capable of the transitional trick.
I talked with Mom about it and she shared with me some memories of earlier Christmastimes when the magic didn’t seem so difficult to come by. I called my kids and chatted about it some and we laughed a little at remembering their first Santa Claus moments. But it was when my son away at school said he was coming home for Thanksgiving, I felt things inside me change, much like that moment in the Grinch, and it was then I encountered the obvious truth. Christmas isn’t created by things and stuff and trappings. It’s inside people.
It’s our special stories, our humored histories and the little searches we Google in talks with one another as the season begins to change and we grow just a little bit closer.
And then suddenly one morning, that little something tips the scales just enough to conjure the Spirit we sought all along. And for the first time of the season, and certainly not the last, we utter our first “Merry Christmas” to a stranger, and indeed, it has arrived.

You march holding signs in vigils without prayer,
News clips and sound bytes from celebrities on air.
Take a moment of silence or a ribbon to wear,
Make appearances in public to show you were there.

Do something symbolic that others will see,
But skirt any substance, lest it benefits thee.
Caught up in your rallies, and causes and claims,
Can’t cough up a dollar, but can divvy up blame.

Thumbs up on a post or a heart if you dare,
Stopping short of much more lest they think you might care.
Scrolling you stop at the internet kittens,
But don’t linger too long or they’ll see you are smitten.

The best we have mustered was never enough,
To make any difference for all of this fluff.
It’s time we got dirty, dug in, made a difference,
Instead of performing this charade of indifference.

Now go get all butt hurt and claim I attack,
But let’s turn the tables and I’ll give it right back.
We lie and we know we will likely do nothing,
While conversely proclaiming “It’s time we did something!”