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The Hidden Joy of Volunteering

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“'A' earned his angel wings at 12:56 a.m. Fly high sweet boy…mommy will love you forever.”

Today I read these words and they set me remembering my brief volunteer time with little A, rocking him while he fell asleep in my arms.

I was at Children’s Hospital Seattle as a part of a Side by Side support team to his parents. Our goal was to help provide some normalcy in their lives during A’s boring and sometimes terrifying hospital treatments. Looking back, it was actually a year ago this month.

I remember one of the things the family wanted to do was take their other small children out to the pumpkin patch to pick out Halloween pumpkins. What they really needed was the comfort of knowing that someone was with their little A while they were away from the hospital. The nurses at Children's Hospital are excellent, but must divide their time among several patients, therefore, having volunteers who will come and support families with children going through treatment is a huge relief for nursing staff, moms and dads.

I have to admit that of late, I haven’t been volunteering as much or as often as I would like to. Busyness and life in general seem to have gotten in the way and that is why the above note about little A brought me up short.

Sometimes it’s these unfortunate events that force us to take the time to evaluate our commitments and think about what type of volunteering we want to do and then identify when we are going to do it! For some this might mean reading stories to children at the library, visiting elderly people in nursing homes, signing up to help at a local hospital, helping an older person with household chores every couple of weeks, volunteering with an organization like Ronald MacDonald House and the list goes on and on, all the way from formal organizations to simply committing to help a neighbor.

The joy, and yes, sometimes the pain, that comes from knowing that in some small way you’ve stepped outside of your comfort zone and comforted or helped another human being is incredibly rewarding.

Please share volunteer opportunities you are involved in and post a link if you can!


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  1. CopyStrandsOctober 7, 2010 at 7:58 PM

    Great post! I plan to volunteer with Girls on the Run: http://www.girlsontherun.org/ where you can mentor a child to train for and run their first 5K!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lindsay ColitsesOctober 8, 2010 at 6:19 AM

    Courtney - Girls on the Run (http://www.girlsontherun.org)looks like so much fun, for both you and the girls - Great idea!

    ReplyDelete

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