Last night I finished the book "29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life" by Cami Walker. I knew nothing about it when I checked it out from the library, but it was available and I was going on vacation so I grabbed it. The author writes about her MS diagnosis and the struggles associated with her disease. She is given a "prescription" from a medicine woman, if you will, who tells her to give away 29 gifts in 29 days and she will become more open to receiving from others and the universe, as well as acknowledge with gratitude all that she receives. When I finished the book, I immediately got on the author's website, and read more stories of giving from the author and others who have joined her movement. And now I am committed to starting my own 29 days of giving!
I thought I would start when I got home from vacation, maybe after the 4th of July on Monday, but then I saw a money collection jar at a gas station in Nebraska and told myself "no time like the present". The collection is for a man who was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, and he has to drive over two hours one way for treatment in Omaha. The money jar is to help him pay for gas. Normally, I pass by those jars. Especially for people that I don't know. But because of the 29 Gifts, I was drawn to it. It made me stop and think how grateful I am that I am healthy, my husband and children are healthy, we are financially stable - not rich, but not poor - and we don't have to worry about how to pay for gas so that we can receive life saving treatment for cancer.
So I put $2.00 in the jar, said a little prayer for the man who will receive it, and said another little prayer of gratitude for my own family's health. I am counting that as Gift 1, Day 1. And it feels good.
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