Caring Allison (My Sacred Life, Sunday)

Caring. It's one of life's great gifts, having hearts which care for others. And, typically, the caring goes on without other people necessarily knowing anything about it. That's okay--the reward one receives for caring is that sense of purpose and inner comfort we all love to feel. Even the pain we feel for others who are in difficulty is a gift, although it is not always one we appreciate in the moment. It's the way of the heart: all feelings are the gift.

Sometimes, though, caring is not done privately and without notice. Sometimes, caring happens in a way that is impossible not to notice. Here's an example.

These two young ladies had their hair cut off this week as they raised money for pediatric cancer research. The young lady on the right is my second-eldest, Allison.

Allison, a sophomore engineering major at CU in Boulder, CO, is a very caring soul. She routinely devotes large amounts of time to projects within her church including mentoring a small group of high-school girls, and she gave her entire Christmas break from college to the families in Thailand that she and 60 other college kids from the same church visited. The young men and women did all kinds of things to help the families who have yet to get their lives back to normal since the huge tsunami of several years ago. They did some construction work on one family's house, prepared a formerly unusable field for planting at another family's home, cleaned up debris which had not been cleared since the water receded, and completed a dozen other, smaller jobs.

How she is able to give so much and still do so well in school is a puzzle to me, but it's one I'm okay with when I cannot find the answer: it's a pleasant mystery to ponder. As long as she is happy with her many different pursuits, I'm happy for her. And, I'm grateful. She is living proof that the next generation has plenty of members who know that caring for others is one of the most-important jobs we are here to perform.