No More Excuses
Up until a couple weeks ago, our family always had an excuse not to
volunteer our time. There always seemed to be a soccer game, family
commitment, work obligation, or birthday party to get in the way of
us spending our Saturday mornings volunteering our time to help
others. Well no longer, we have adopted a new family motto, “No
More Excuses”, and this past Saturday we put it to the test.
It was a dreary cold morning and all of us were tired from a long
week of work and school. When the time came to get out of bed at 7
a.m. and go volunteer our help delivering food to the elderly any
previous enthusiasm we had suddenly faded away. We wasted no time in
coming up with a lot of reasons not to go like “we’re tired”, “our
beds are warm”, “it’s cold outside”, “we just want to hang with you”
and the list continued. So after my morning cry of “No More
Excuses!”, I pulled them from bed, fed them a warm breakfast, packed
them in our new gas filled minivan, and sped off to our
destination. I tuned the grumbles from the back seat out and
continued to cheerfully cry “No more excuses!”, “You’ll love this,
trust me!”, “You’ll feel so good when you’re done!” all the way to
our church. At church we met up with some other families who looked
just as enthused as us to be there at 8:30 a.m. on a cold dreary
Saturday morning and all of us loaded into the van and off we went.
It wasn’t long before we started talking about all the great things
in our lives and all of our past volunteer experiences and suddenly
we were a little more enthused. After arriving at the charity
headquarters, we were quickly put to work delivering food to low
income elderly where we were greeted with smiles of hello, cries of
happiness, and thanks filled with gratefulness. Suddenly our nice
warm beds of a couple hours ago didn’t seem so important and we
ended our day of volunteering by getting just as much out of it as
those we helped.
So the next time your family has the opportunity to volunteer, what
will be your excuse? Remember, your kids will thank you for the
little things later.
Polly Schlafhauser is Founder and President of Families with
Purpose, a website dedicated to helping busy families enhance their
family life. To subscribe to their newsletter or to learn more
about volunteering as a family, visit their website at
http://www.familieswithpurpose.com/