Day 79 ❦ Take time today to just stop and listen.

Day 79 ❦ Give Time

The Gift: A listening ear

As I have been nearing the end of the one hundred days exercise, I am aware of the limited time remaining. Each day I wake up thinking about what I am going to do to fulfill the giving experience. And there is a sense of expectation that is part of that wake-up call. Today though, I know that the giving opportunities are about to flood in, literally.

Several weeks ago I talked about the impact of the floods that hit Austin and the overwhelming response that happened almost immediately. Emergency assistance poured in, friends and family along with complete strangers who became friends and family traveled to our community and helped empty houses, clean up the trash and disinfect houses that were still habitable. Now the next wave of assistance is starting to gear up and my Rotary Club and the District in which we are located is getting ready to make a huge impact.

The day the flood hit, people called and e-mailed me from all over the world. I didn't get the thoughts and notes for a few days because our electricity and services were turned off. When the lights came back on I was astounded by the well-wishes and people who sent me messages. And although my house was not impacted, the Sheriff was launching the rescue boats from my driveway. We sit on one of the few hills in town and we provided a landing pad for the people who were being evacuated, and days later as they went in to salvage anything they could from their homes across the street from us. I will never forget standing by the river side as the banks overflowed, just watching as the water rose, it was almost mesmerizing, we could see the water rising that quickly.

As I was standing there watching the water rise, a young woman came and silently stood next to me. After a long time of silence, she started talking to me and shared that across the street, covered in 5 feet of water was her ground floor apartment where she had just unloaded all of the gifts from a baby shower her friends had held for her last weekend. She was a college student and she was so worried about how she was going to replace all of her school books and recently completed homework and as she talked and started listing all of the things that she had just lost, she cried and sobbed and finally told me that she just realized that she had lost all of her Christmas decorations and she wept inconsolably. After a few more minutes she said that one of the things that kept her going through her pregnancy was the thought of sharing Christmas after the semester ended with her new baby and she cried and cried. I brought out a few chairs and lots of boxes of Kleenex and we sat there for what now seems like hours. And she cried and I listened, and we watched the water rise together.

While that was not the giving experience for today, I want to give space to her tears and her grief because it was that experience that inspired the next several days’ giving opportunities...and so for today, we will just all sit quietly on the banks of the river and listen...

❦ Take time today to just stop and listen.