Season of Giving

Every Christmas is an opportunity for my family to give and go beyond what we did in previous years.

Now we are not the best at doing this, but this year we are trying the 25 Days of Giving thru our personal Facebook pages and trying to inspire our family and friends.

So far it looks like we did inspire some! At the very least I just love getting people to think beyond themselves and THEIR needs.

I want to tell you how this all started though and why I feel this burden to give.

We've done the giving tree at most malls since I was little. I do remember shopping for some other kid around my age and then putting it under the huge tree at Tacoma mall. Its much more scaled back now. Smaller tree, less of a presence.

Anyhow, that sort of died off with my mom as we got older, but I guess I never lost the thought of those going w/out.

Then when James and I were first married and Noah was maybe 2 we were recipients of our church giving tree. It crushed me. I wanted to be the one giving, not the one receiving and we had given to a girl that Christmas. It was hard for me to accept that someone wanted to bless us. I guess in some small way I figured people saw us as poor or needy - not that they just wanted to give because they wanted to give.

After awhile I decided I needed to be that person giving and get over my feelings associated with receiving. Good thing I did because I've gotten some good things over the years! ;)

But it started with that one Christmas and went from there.

Now with our 25 Days of Giving I can't help but want to give in every way I can - its not just giving stuff, sometimes its just giving of yourself.

Its been a little hard trying to get creative about all the things we are doing, but its been fun. I will post a full recap of all the stuff myself and others did during the 25 Days.

Be sure to give this year and give of yourself vs. giving of stuff. Stuff loses value - people never lose value.