so i have talked about before my family's committment to the operation christmas child shoe box drive for samaritian's purse. it is very easy for us to take things for granted here in the US even during the hard times. there are moments when you look around and think, " how come that person has so much more than me? it isn't fair." but working on these boxes every year and also on other projects every year, i hope to remind myself and my family and teach noah that you know what life isn't fair but it is up to you to make it better for you and those around you.
we have been collecting things for these shoe boxes for the last 10 months now - school supplies, toothbrushes, stickers, pencils, stuffed animals. they have all been sitting in my closet til this week (also thanks to laura, for sending me some toys for the boxes!) we went out last weekend and bought 20 plastic shoe boxes to fill. and this morning noah decided he wanted to help me out with getting all the things organized for the shoe boxes.
noah worked tiredlessly beside me for about an hour. i talked to him and explained to him what the boxes were for. once in a while, i would see him eye a toy and say "noah's toy". and then i would ask him if he wanted to keep it - some of these toys he had not seen before and i was ok if he wanted to keep one; i would just get another one for the box later. noah would say "no" and then put the toy back in the box.
but then the real test of sharing came when i broke out the bag of 300 lollipops (or "suckers" as noah likes to call them). my sweet son can easily be bribed for a sucker. we had kept these suckers hidden from view for a long time because i knew he would be after them. i explained to him that we would be putting at least 10 suckers each in a baggie and putting them in each box. i told him that some kiddos out there do not even get 1 sweet a year and that is why we wanted to put a little treat in there for them.
this would be the real test - would he hoard all the suckers? noah looked at the bag and then started counting out suckers " one, two, three, four..." and then he put them in a baggie. noah continued to count out suckers for each baggie. i didn't hear any whining about him needing one himself. after about 10 baggies though, he did pull a sucker out of the big bag and took a well deserved break. i swelled with pride at my son. he is learning what it is to share and i hope this follows him throughout his lifetime.
when we were done packing the 20 boxes, we found that we still had enough for 3 more shoe boxes. i dug out some of my running shoes' boxes from the closet and we filled those too. then noah dutifully stacked each of the totes up in 5 neat piles in our living room. we still need to label each box for a boy or girl and we are going to include a short letter from my family for each child who receives the box.
if you want to read about how these shoe boxes have touched different lives, check out the stories of the shoeboxes here.