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.
About the Author
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 www.familieswithpurpose.com
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