Since January 4, I have lost sixty-eight pounds. Barring some miraculous – or otherwise unhealthy – drop over the next month, I will fall well short of my 100-pound stretch goal I established at the start of the year.
Yesterday, I received my first check from a donor. He had pledged a dollar-per-pound but sent a check for the full hundred. I take that as a vote of confidence that I’ve done my best, given a “hundred pound effort” thus far, and will eventually realize my goal.
Such is the amazing support I’ve received over the course of 2012. From family, friends, and strangers. Blacks, browns, and beiges. Catholics, Protestants, and others.
Tip the Scales 2012! began with a hope to pull myself up from a despair sown by a lifetime of poor choices and, at the same time, to help pull some others up from a lifetime in true poverty.
As the vision unfolded in January and February, I quickly realized that this wasn’t about pulling myself up but giving myself for others to pull up. Christ’s example showed that giving oneself brings healing, so I began to see TS2012! working also as a way to help my kind supporters in their own lives, simply by giving them a cause to give themselves to.
Finally, there were the truly poor. The unwanted and unloved, in Kingston, Jamaica, and beyond. They are pulled up everyday by Missionaries of the Poor, by Brothers who, by every measure of the world, are capable and yet give their full capabilities to those rejected by the world. These Brothers live in poverty alongside the poor, with utmost faith that the Lord will provide for their needs.
For a God whose love provided all creation, it is easy to wonder why such poverty exists, and yet through such poverty, we see such wealth. Prayers, workers, donors, and “lovers” all reveal a wealth beyond dollars and cents, a wealth of humanity, serving as God’s hands and feet for fellow man. In that, God lets us share in his godliness and glory in a unique way. One of countless ways the Lord, without causing evil, uses it to incite a greater good.
For all these things – your generosity of attention and finance, the opportunity offered by the poor to teach greater love for fellow man, the faith examples of brothers and sisters who have freely given all, for God’s working in all this, and finally, for all the success I’ve had so far in finding better health – I am thankful today.
God bless you and yours this Thanksgiving!
Most sincerely,
Steve