It’s the day after Christmas and I just had a “moment” that is worth sharing. As I’m pottering around the house disposing of wrapping paper and helping my wife find places for newly acquired gifts, my 8-year-old son comes into the kitchen for another slice of homemade pumpkin bread. There is a thick end-piece remaining, and he looks up at me as if to ask if he can take the rest. I smile and nod my approval. He smiles back, takes the chunk, and heads back to finish a Mario cartoon.
In that moment, I realize I will never take for granted the blessing of being able to feed my children. “Never, never, never take this for granted,” I say to myself. I imagine the millions and millions who have watched their children struggle and go without food, or worse. I think of the uncountable numbers of children who have starved to death. I realize this is, and has been, a very real thing for a very, very long time. And how much harder it must be to watch our children go hungry than to go hungry ourselves.
If it were just as simple as doing without so they could eat, what a blessing. But it never is. It’s more than that. It’s the hopelessness of not being able to do anything. And I feel it in that moment in a way my 21st century American brain has never felt it before. I’ve always had plenty, I realize. Maybe I wore some second-hand clothes as a young boy, sure, but we ate. I was warm. I had a home, a family, loving parents, a bed, brothers, friends.
So that’s my New Year’s resolution: Never, ever, ever take for granted the blessing of being able to feed my children. “Always know this,” I say to myself. Always remember this when deciding whether to help a hungry or homeless person. Always think of it. Do the little things I might not have done before. Make small differences, in hopes that many small changes from many people will lead to large changes for all.
Chad Donohue
Snohomish
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